pistolfingers

brit's worried about her baby?

2008-05-20T15:00:00.001-07:00

probably not, but I just had to test out posting directly from Flickr. pretty sweet :)

the scrounging

2008-05-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

since this thing here that I post to went on life support over the past year, i've kinda been bummed. i've felt like it was a part of my life that was sort of introspective or something. self congratulatory maybe? cry for attention? bordedom? a place to pretend to question my actions on the internet?

well, i've never really been happy with the lack of my art i've put into this blog which is one of the reasons it exists. the other of course is to rant like a crotchety, out of touch, cynical loud mouth. of all of those things, the truth is, i'm really only out of touch, otherwise i'm quite nice.

so I poked through some drawings just now and grabbed this one because its not offensive, and also because it looks like Britney* Spears a little bit, maybe back when she had her dark hair... and I thought to myself... Britney* knows what it's like to be a scrounge I bet, this is the perfect filler for a post on the ol' blog.

poor girl.

and just so you know, that pic wasn't originally meant to be Britney, but... well... she gets around I guess...
__________________
*brit-knee, not brit-UH-knee

and whats up with... ?!?

2008-05-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

...apologies to coco.... ;)

have you noticed how songs these days*... (sign of the times? is that what old men* are going to say in the 21st century? "Why these songs today... why I oughtta.... mumble mumble....zzzzzzz......zzzzzz..... )

so, have you noticed how songs these days... you know they do that old trick in the middle of the song... like, okay, let's take a little break, keep the rhythm going... but, I'm going to make a phone call... ring ring...

in the old days when the band/musician/songwriter/producer/engineer/wacked out chick high on reds half awake on the couch would do the old "makin a phone call!" in the middle of the song... the line would ring... ring... and somebody would answer... or if you were in a Pink Floyd song, they wouldn't answer, or they'd hang up on you, or you'd get the operator wondering where you'd gone off too...

but in the new days, when these DJ's and hip-hoppists and electronic musicians and pop stars acting like musicians but their songs are written and produced by the money hungry big corporate record labels that you keep feeding from your wallet make a phone call, it rings and rings... and you get a damn answering machine. you *always* get an answering machine. "yo dog, call me back dog."

as if you didn't feel stupid enough rambling on to a fucking machine while no one or everyone listens, your retarded "status update" monologue could be fodder for the general listening populace... but like the clapper, or Velcro, you were late to the party.

also, i'm watching the Robot Chicken Star Wars episode, and the "Chewie combing his hair like Fonzie" gag is my favorite I think. damn fine showing there.

*sign of the times means that when you search "old men" on google images the fourth and seventh photos returned from the search are hard core porn.

incidentally, did you know the closed captioned subtitles for chewbacca have him saying nothing more than "gah" ? it's true.

clip test - edit now with more post in the post!

2008-05-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

oh yeah, test posts on the blog. bam!

it's over there
<- (edit: not over there anymore)

and down there (pointing down symbol)

yeah, so this new thing I figured out with my google reader has me fascinated, which means i'm gonna cheap out on another blog post.

bearp.

thing is the french, are kinky... naughty... crude possibly... and they've been that way for quite some time. I don't think any of this is new information? but if you like art, old art, curios (however you spell that) you should see the kink they put on post cards... a hundred years ago...

How do be a jerk to your co-workers, part 1

2007-09-16T23:07:00.000-07:00

If you come across some random snot trash in the hallway...

...locate the nearest office. In this case, the office belonged to a group of lovely coordinators working on a beautiful, heart wrenching film about woodchucks. Unfortunately, being in such close proximity to this newly discovered snot trash, they bear the responsibility for flinging this snot trash in to a public space, littering up our shared resourses.

So the first thing to do is to walk into the office and accuse the person most likely to be upset. That's always good for a laugh.

Or, in my case, blame it on the one person that isn't there, out of the four people sharing the office.

Then, the only appropriate thing to do is to alert the person of their trespass, and suggest a course of action to remedy their fault.

documenting the painful process of movie making... part 1

2007-09-14T10:26:00.000-07:00

this is a real life chat over changes to a shot... I should recount it's long and painful life. It's enough to say that after months working on the shot, my animator has to virtually restart the shot from scratch, but just as he's started blocking in the new ideas, we get an audio change, not heretofore mentioned to us, that dictates a change in his action. A change that is exactly the opposite of what we've been asked to do...

(10:21:43 AM) Mack: i listened to the new audio on *****.*** and the **** was taken out.
(10:22:11 AM) Mack: from what i understood, ****** still wanted the gulp
(10:23:03 AM) Torn: ffs
(10:23:10 AM) Torn: i gotta find out wtf is happenning
(10:23:23 AM) Mack: madness i tell you............madness!
(10:25:11 AM) Torn: we're boned
(10:25:56 AM) Mack: i have grown immune to the boning

dark times....

* just like a government document, important information not available for civilian eyes has been blacked out. it's going to be a very funny movie though, trust me.

frosted face

2007-09-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

Today at work...

Rob: "Rob leaves the room, you guys stay in the room, do whatever then leave, Rob comes back to the room, and Simon's face is covered in frosting."

************

This is my real life.

life in the dungeon

2007-09-12T14:19:00.000-07:00

Animation Director: "Can we get bigger nuts? These nuts are a little small."

VFX Superviser: "Yeah, we've got all different sized nuts, we can look at our nuts and see how big of nuts you want."

Animation Director: "Okay. When we shot this we weren't sure how many nuts we needed and we didn't want to pack it full of nuts."

VFX Supervisor: "Well, that's no problem. We'll take a look at the nuts and choose which ones we want to put in there."

Animation Director: "That would be great!"

*************

That is a true and (pretty darn) accurate recounting of my dailies yesterday... It's good to be alive.

ce n'est pas

2007-09-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

...He played a lot of chess...

He searched a lot. Maybe somebody already said what he wanted to say. He searched for it. Though he knew the words weren't his... The were stolen, and they were empty. God said why. It could have been funny. He searched for that too. Did he ever feel like he was chained? Did he ever feel trapped? Trapped by fate? Why, he felt it was just so much of a tour bus, he gave directions to the driver, but if the driver turned on a street he said to, wasn't it only by coincidence? Wasn't it? So many wrong turns made, it was statistically improbable. Maybe it was okay to show only a reflection of what really was him.

He supposed.

I guess that was the only thing that kept him distracted.

well, now...

2007-08-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

I suppose if I were to be working on some top secret movie about some kind of rodents who were related to one another... and maybe just one of them were abducted by a top secret government agency whom did some kind of something or other to their bone structure... containing the word adamantium... and hair... this creature could possibly be... as unattractive as this...

usurpation of authority, right?

2007-04-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

this is a story of two rebels. you are very excited right now, i can see.

it's a tuesday evening and the time is brutal, the usual adjectives like rushed and hectic apply, the perfect culmination of a scheme so grand as to challenge the delicate hands within which it is grasped, as they ring life from lifeless circumstances and run on sentences from the tender white of a blank page. or computer screen. unless it's not white. a lot of people have a different background color than white on their computers.

the occassion is a presentation of the independent film, "Waitress", a film by Adrienne Shelly, at the Arclight theatre in hollyweird.

the players were two wonderful humans, referred to as 'he' or 'she', or perhaps, 'him' and 'her', for reasons not expressly evident.

hurry to the theatre, barely on time. but wait! it's a screening held by the notorious AFI and the ubiquitous (not really, i'm just molesting the thesaurus at this point) SAGindie. said parties, in full display of their own personal pomp, ran an extremely tight security check. with little to no effort, him and her brought in two cameras and one knife. without meaning to of course. one camera was attached to a cel phone, the other forgotten in a coat pocket, and the knife, merely a tool for cutting things like wire, or boxes when people around him say "Damn, I really need a knife to open this right now." well you know what? bam! there's a knife right when you need it. maybe someday in the future humans won't need to open things, or separate one thing from another, but until that day, a few prepared humans will hold the gateway to the contents of sealed boxes... well... they waved the metal detector over his pocket and it grew exited passing over the knife. too be fair, the pocket also contained a bunch of keys, but the knife's clip was quite visible outside the pocket. at any rate, he was asked, "Keys?" to which he responded, "Yes." The cameras were mostly forgotten in a purse.

They were there to watch a movie, not change the world, so just calm the fuck down you knee jerk grass eating marxist freaks.

it's a short story really. i was going to drag it out, but honestly i don't feel like it. plus i have to get back to work. and that was really the main point. him and her did ditch the famous actors during the Q&A, leaving right in the middle of the discussion in plain view of all the serious films buffs who would never deign to have the balls to us this many participle phrases to explain how they ditched famous actors in favour of hot apple pie from the apple pan. there is another blog elsewhere in the ether that delves into the fantastic world of celebrity elbow rubbing, but you can't read it. it's private. so solly chollie, no linky for you.

also, my shift key sticks so i decided instead of having a bunch of random capital letters floating about i'd just skip it's use altogether. gotta love a blog that expounds on the usage of the keyboard upon which it is composed... or not...

irony or karma?

2007-04-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm eating salad for lunch. Chinese chicken salad. I have too many bananas. How lucky for me. I'd better eat them soon before they turn brown and shrivel. And I think my apples are going to taste mealy soon. That should be enough fuel for penis jokes, so when you finish patting yourself on the back for having an I.Q. of 68, read the next paragraph.

After dailies, standing at the top of the stairs discussing unrelated importance of something or other, she walks by. Replete with black nail polish and a little left over eyeliner. From a pirate party she says. Excellent. Pirates are second only to robots. And robots are second only to monkeys. And monkeys are second only to bacon. As tasty as it is, monkey bacon just isn't the same as pig bacon. And robot bacon hurts my teeth. And pirate bacon will send you right back to the first paragraph, with the addition of a pole-boy* reference.

So she passes by us, interupting our conversation with her pirate left overs, and walking down the stairs she says how, with all the black, she's feeling like an angsty high school kid today.

I suggested listening to some Depeche Mode.

Like bittersweet justice, or a moment of sad emotional nakedness, I find myself, without realizing it at first, listening to Depeche Mode while eating my salad and writing this blog.

Sigh.

___________________
* pole-boy. Apparently this is a young man, kept aboard a sailing vessel in times of old, who was, while not in 'service', was seated on a pole, as a means of loosening up the exit ramp of his interstate where food is transported from the docks to the local convenience store, so as to facilite the reversal of the flow of traffic. If you catch my meaning. I guess 1800's sea going ships didn't really have a lot of chicks aboard. Too bad for the pole boy. I was unable to locate a substantial reference for this on the internet, and since the internet is the repository of all Truth, I suspect I have been shined on, regardless of the numerous times I've heard the phrase used. If you like the phrase, it is public domain, and fit for use in your personal communications, should you need to drive home your point.

Song of the Day, March 31st

2007-03-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

Yeah, now this is an interesting one, I wake up with Carmen Miranda in my head. How often does this happen to you? I know you're a big fan but...

To be up front, I most likely had been listening to heavy metal, or surf music, or maybe some British band crying out some sad love song, but certainly not Carmen Miranda. I have no beef with her, in fact I think she's pretty damn cool, but I don't go around listening to her.

So, to have this song, "Mama, Yo Quero", running around in my noggin first thing in the morning (and most of the day it turns out) is, as Kirk said in Wrath of Kahn, "damn peculiar." And really, it's most likely that I only know who she is thanks to the three alley cats harassing Tom of "Tom & Jerry" fame, strutting around singing "Mama, Yo Quero" and playing Tom like a fiddle. Poor guy always had such a tough go in life, but he never let that get him down...

Where am I now?

2007-03-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

So I spaced out. Here's a useless post to shake off the cobwebs. I think my brain went to sleep for a couple months, sort of like Cameron did just before he fell into the pool in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", taking care of it's own business, a little spring cleaning if you will... I'm guessing here...

I think it was a Buddhist monk, perhaps he was Vietnamese if memory serves, who said something about being like a glass of apple juice (now remember, most apple juice the world gets is not pasteurized so it has all kinds of apple pulp in it. I'm telling you this because it's essential to the following sentence...), you pour the juice and immediately all the pulp and juice is stirred up into a flurry, and you must wait for some time, for the pulp to settle, and the juice to become still.

Of course he isn't talking about being a glass of juice, he's talking about the state of being, for you, and I.

I think my apple juice has been continually stirred for some period of time by external and internal forces. I can't say with any certainty that it's calming down...

Song of the Day, Jan. 11th

2007-01-11T10:47:00.000-08:00

Alright, so since this is the second one these I guess I should explain. Everyone gets a song stuck in their head from time to time, right? I have this thing where it is in my head long before I wake up, and it's there playing over and over again when I wake up, and there seems to be nothing I can do to shut it out. It'll then slowly fade over the course of the day. Often the song is something utterly surprising, like Journey in the previous post (I don't own or listen to Journey, but my folks did when I was a child.).

So this is something that I've just sort of become fascinated with, and like journaling your dreams, I'm writing down my headsongs. On more of a lark really, not that I 'care' that much, just out of curiosity.

Today's song isn't so strange, it's from an album I own, and enjoy listening to frequently, Coltsfoot Leaf, from MF Doom's Special Herbs and Spices Vol. 1.

If you like *good* beats and mixes, check it out. If you listen to Hip Hop cancer (Chuck D's words which struck a chord with me, not that I'm cool or hip to the black man's plight and the origins of spoken word set to beats, I just listen and try to understand...) on the radio, well, maybe this will expand your candy-rotted mind. Of course with any popular music there are some stand outs, but coming from the Public Enemy, NWA era (I'm old), most of what I hear sounds like record label fluff.

Not to be judgmental or anything, this is all just my opinion, no disrespect meant towards all ya'll's personal tastes and whatnot... just trying to help out over here...

Song of the Day, Jan 5th.

2007-01-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

I should have posted the other day, because this is exciting. I reported in one of those retarded surveys on mySpace that I had the Mexican Hat Dance song in my head for most of the day. Normally that would drive me bonkers, but that's a pretty cool song.

Today it's "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey. It was there in my pre-waking dreams. Couldn't tell you why. It's still there, and bugging me out. I'm not the biggest Journey fan...

Where does this shit come from?

Masta Shake, with hands, sketch...

2006-12-28T16:26:00.001-08:00

As if he wasn't gross to begin with...

Sirach

2006-12-26T20:10:00.000-08:00

a poison, a sickness

an infection

enters through the wound, and swelling red, all it touches
dives to the heart

to kill all it finds.

Technorati made me do it.

2006-12-26T01:09:00.000-08:00

So.... here's a new one. I am fascinated by all these folks, this internet generation Y or Z or whatever the hell they are called these days, these wacky kids that scare old people like me because old people like me who are old are... well... old... fascinated by the interlinked linked togetherness and other fancy science fiction futuristic terminology and other such words that describe the collective society, nay, community which they comprise.

At any rate, I've experimented in a tiny amount with del.icio.us tagging to think that it's the wave of the future, and is so far ahead of it's time that most people I talk to just don't get it. Basically, I can share my bookmarks with you, or anyone. I can have access to those bookmarks anywhere and anytime I'm on the 'net. And so can you. I can also 'tag' anything, anywhere, at anytime (I'm on the 'net) and it then becomes available to me and all of you. ALL of you... BUT! tagging is also weighted and you can see what tags are getting action, what others are looking at or for, and what is similar and related... And more. It's all very sweet and you will all see in the future how freaking kick ass it is.

As an aside, Flickr uses tagging in the same way, if you are familiar with searching pictures on Flickr then you've got a good idea on what is to come. I like Flickr. I'm a Google guy myself, but they dropped the ball on the photo thing... sorry Google, you know I love you...

And so, here's the thing:

Technorati Profile

that Technorati told me to put in here... oh yeah, I didn't make that point. So yeah, I guess I can use tagging on del.icio.us and it can show up over on Technorati, which I'm also still just figuring out.

Yeah, basically I have no idea what I'm doing, but all the kids are doing it, and I want to stay hip and what not... be 'with it'.

And it's fun... you know, totally rad.

Hey ! Kevin !!!

2006-12-23T17:59:00.001-08:00

I miss you.

cup's of coffee, redux!

2006-12-23T17:40:00.000-08:00

ah HA!

So, as I proclaimed I was no connoisseur of coffee cups, I come across this little gem. Perhaps I should reclassify myself as no collector of coffee cups, collecting anything requires money, mostly, and I have a hard time spending money to have a lot of one thing that will get used very little. I am not opposed to collecting a few here and there over time and eventually ending up with a lot. And perhaps that is what collecting is. I guess I'm contradicting myself. What I'm trying to say is, I do not go out of my way to find great coffee cups, I only hope that, every now and again, perhaps I will run across one that kicks ass.

Well, out of ye ol' blue, I get hit with this beauty. This cup hails from the 1960's. I found two of them, but only bought one. They were not expensive, in fact less so than some novelty coffee cups. This one was a slight bit more beat up than it's brother, which is the reason I chose it. More rustic or something...

And as you can see, this wonderful cup works both left handed and right handed. This is gratifying considering how disturbing I find cups with graphics printed only for lefties...

...those inbred bastards...

a taste, a squeeze and some loathe

2006-12-21T14:25:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been thinking about this for awhile. I have another blog just for my art, but I find this blog and that blog crossing paths every now and again. I suppose I could play that up and create some excitement, but hey, that's too complicated and I'm too lazy. So I think I'm going to squeeze all those posts into their appropriate locations in time and space in this blog. That'll make this one twice as busy and harder to look at, or easier if you don't like to read.

I've been really pissy in my last couple posts. This past week I must be doing that male hormone cycle we get like girls get with their PMS. Bunch a hogwash if you ask me. I don't have time for that froo froo shit. This is the loathe paragraph, I don't feel like constructing something special in such a way that it would dawn on you about 3/4's the way through reading it.

And finally, in case old man wasn't enough, here's Squeaky Beaker, so named by Ethan (I'd point you to his kick ass stopmo site, but it appears defunct at the moment). Some more of these will show up at various points in this blog's past, due to their timestamp when they come over. Enjoy.

This guy is obviously unfinished. I think I drew him at work, and had to, well, get back to work. I think there is something special in his legs missing. Wouldn't you like to know what his legs look like? I do. I don't think you and I will ever find out...

The old man and the airport

2006-12-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

Oh my goodness.

I love the airport. You know, the mall or other densely populated human gathering locale can be so rich in opportunities for observed human behavior, but the airport occupies a niche market.

Airports are not casual. People go shopping to relax, to acquire goods, perhaps to obtain sustenance with which to bog their gullets... Not so at the airport. Here, everyone is in a rush, they are concerned, they are concentrating, they are more than anything, upset.

Okay, I'll concede shopping may or may not be relaxing for some, and often shoppers do, or are in a, rush. But if you are a reasonable reader, and I know you are, you get the point. I know I can ramble on and on ad nauseam, but that is over important details for you to see, feel and taste the experience. So don't be a dullard. Keep up.

(I'll take this moment to point out that this blog also contains material which could be filed into the 'Overheard #xx' category, just as the previous entry. Alas, perhaps I was rash in my judgment that Overheard's days were finished. Too late now I suppose... funny how judgment is spelled without the 'e' after the 'g' and yet the word still has a hard 'g' sound...)

First up, we have the dumb family with the poor pre-teen daughter being molded into an idiot herself. I'm standing in the (rather) long line at LAX to get through security, and this couple is standing behind me chattering away.

Another pause. Perhaps there is a more elegant way to setup a story than what I do here, with all my starts and stops. By the way, since I used the word 'story', I'd like to point out that, with the rare exception that should be obvious to you in that it stands out rather starkly from the rest, most of these entries into this blog are quite true and I try not to embellish much if at all. Of course I may craft it in such a way as to hope to at least keep you entertained... I am aware of the mundaneness of some of these posts... I'm mean... *coffee cup imagery* ?! What the F is that all about? Only here folks. Well, and probably a hundred thousand other blogs on the 'net...

But I wasn't pausing to tell you all that crap, I just spewed that out in a moment of unforgivable honesty...

So I hope that you, reader, are not offended by what follows because it contains some convoluted personal judgments (without an 'e'). Alright, the first thing I overhear from dad is, "...even if you're attacked, your chances are still pretty good. The odds of you being blown up in a plane are still very low." I'll take this moment to give him the nod towards his statistical assumption, however unscientifically he may have arrived at it... His wife chimes in that she agrees, and complains about the security measures. She says she would rather security remained as it were before the 9/11 attacks. "I'd rather take my chances," she says. Well, thank you fucking idiot lady, but the *other* ONE HUNDRED TWENTY people may NOT want to gamble their lives, no matter the odds.

Of course, while I personally think your *odds* of going down in a plane due to accident is most likely higher than you dying as a result of sabotage, I'd like to point out that accidents do not choose to happen, as opposed to terrorist attacks against a civilian target where humans can and do actively choose to make these things happen. You cannot perform a security checkpoint to discern the likelihood of a mechanical disaster. Likewise you can perform 'maintenance' (note the root of the word, 'maintain', taken literally would mean to do nothing more than you are already doing, it's an abstract thought that I want to get across to you, since most of America is reading at the 2nd grade level these days...) and hope to prevent a bombing.

We have seen it all over the world. Car bombings are a daily occurrence. Perhaps there should be a lengthy security check before you can drive your car...

But all of that aside, what really offended me, was, regardless of the talk about odds and what not, was the brash selfishness. It's typical of Los Angeles, but I personally still find in inexcusable. The security line would be a HELL of a lot shorter if these three were the only ones on Earth. But then they wouldn't NEED security because there would be no one around to attack them, and, Hell!, there'd be no one to fly the God damned plane so they could get wherever the fuck they were in such a hurry to get to.

That was just the cake. The icing was the out loud proclamation by daddy, "They should just do racial profiling, anyone with a turban should be automatically investigated."

I had two responses to this. First was, shut your fucking mouth. As the saying goes, it's one thing to be an idiot, it's quite another to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I myself have ridden in a plane with turban wearing folk, and I'll admit to having emotions about this. But I was quick to slap myself (metaphysically) for such a blanket judgment (without an 'e') of a society, a religion, a race, a whatever. All Americans are gun loving cowboys, right? I know I am. Thanks to the rest of the world for judging me (with no 'e') thusly. Hypocrites. So it really bothers me to see Americans do it. And the reasonably intelligent people (are there really so few of us?) are caught in the fray between these knee-jerk, overly-emotional, fear driven cattle called the human race.

For fuck sake.

Basically, daddy, you're just a fucking moron.

Secondly, do you think they don't already do that? How naive do you have to be? So far nearly 100% of the folks that have crashed our own airplanes into our own buildings have been of Arabic decent. I'm sorry. It upsets my stomach to say it because I simply don't want to group a bunch of people in with a handful of bad apples. It seems terribly wrong. But as the saying goes, call a spade a spade. This is a hot button topic and personally, I really hate the way it's polarized, but shit, it's all fucked up any which way you slice it. Daddy is still a buffoon.

The worst part is the pre-teen daughter who is going to grow up a shining product of their parenting.

But enough of that. Onward Starbuck's !

I get some coffee at Starbuck's after suffering through the whole TEN MINUTES of the security check (dear God, a travesty!) and I want to be bold and get the Peppermint Mocha, which is seasonal in case that wasn't offensively obvious. Yes, I know good coffee, yes, Starbuck's isn't the best in the world, it does just fine though, so you lovers and haters go hash it out somewhere else... McDonald's Sausage McMuffin ain't no gourmet breakfast but damn that shit tastes good every now and again... I can't shake my white-trash roots...

I sit down and pull out my M7 (I love this thing), so I can store some thoughts real fast before they fade (including the family unit which I have so unjustly sat in judgment on with no 'e') and I get this from an older couple sitting next to me: "This tastes one hundred percent better!" Well I suppose it does. One hundred percent better than what? Gold? Poop? Burger King? I think it was in regards to a Starbuck's sandwich. I don't imagine that is some kind of food for the gods, but I *am* sure it is better than many things that can be had for your stomach.

It struck me as an odd thing, taken literally. As English speakers, and especially as Americans, we communicate a great deal with metaphors. Sometimes it is rather entertaining to sit back for a minute and listen to what is being said, taken in it's literal form. I am really curious what exactly is one hundred percent worse (which is absolutely worse, using 'absolute' literally) than a Starbuck's sandwich and more importantly, how one arrives at such a mathematical conclusion.

I also wrote myself a note about "hating shit that reminds you of other shit that you hate." I don't remember what that was about now, but it sounds frustrating, whatever it is...

Well, my flight was delayed by about an hour and a half, so out comes the M7 again and I start up a doodle to pass the time. I scratched out this picture, inspired by an old man who had walked up and sat down a little ways across from me along side his wife.

The picture is terribly unfair, he was a pleasant and normal looking person, so I am misrepresenting him here almost in his entirety. Except the socks. The black socks are dead accurate.

And now, it's Jerry Springer time...

Damn that was a rant and a half. I hate putting that up there at the top, about terrorism, because there just isn't much to laugh about. Most of it is very very sad. Sad because of the hatred. Sad because of the death. Sad because this is the current state of human affairs. We *choose* to do this to each other. Are we not brothers and sisters after all? We fight and kill each other for 'things'.

A very wise man once said to me, (this man is the closest person to a 'guru' I have ever met in my life, and this is just one of many many things he said to me, astounding in it's simplicity, and beautiful in it's honesty).

We're still apes, fighting over bananas...

Think about that. Like one of those trick questions where the answer is so obvious that you almost never see it. There is so much in that sentence that you aren't getting, because the message looks so obvious.

This man said these things to me in a context I cannot relate in such an eloquent manner as he, the best I can do is tell you to try and figure it out, and say, trust me, it's in there. I am only a student of life myself, not a teacher, but I have met some teachers, and we could certainly use a lot more of them in the world...

The evolution of mankind.

2006-12-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so. You've got coffee cups, right? And many many times they have something clever or wonderful printed on them, a picture of a beloved hound dog, or an advertisement for the local printing shop, or a cartoon about a couple having sex before having this cup of coffee...

That is all fine and dandy, but I've noticed (not that I am some kind of coffee cup connoisseur, but I do take pleasure in a fine example of that species of beverage transport...) that most of these cups with some sort of graphical image or message on them only have the image on one side. And that side is the one that points out when holding the cup in your left hand and inwards when holding the cup in your right hand.

Now you are saying to yourself, "Self, what the hell is he on about?" (which is the way a Brit might put it.) Or, "Self, do you give a shit, 'cause I don't!" (which is the way most Americans might put it.)

Regardless of which you are, or whether you are something else altogether the point remains the same. The graphic is outward in the left hand and inwards in the right hand.

I don't know about you, but I am, and so are 70 to 90 percent of all human beings, right handed. If you are left handed then I feel bad for you. Evolution has decided that, because you are prone to paranoia, alcoholism, Crohn's disease, accidents and dying young, that you will (in Darwinian fashion) not be selected to continue down the future path of our species. As I like to say, too bad for you. Shoulda been right handed...

So even thought right handers are the outright majority, and we are also superiour to our cave dwelling, left handed ancestors... most coffee cups still have to be held in the left hand in order for the graphic printed on the cup to be seen by anyone other than your belly button.

If I hold the cup I am drinking coffee from right now, a nice example of a retro coffee cup printed with the label of the ol' A. H. Perfect & Co.'s Perfect Coffee Brand coffee (how's that for 1950's advertising redundancy? I love that shit.), in my left hand, which I am doing now because I am typing and so I use my 'back up' hand to do the menial work of lifting so my right hand can be free to hover over the keyboard as I consider my next run on sentence, I cannot myself see the graphic. But I am not looking at the graphic. I am drinking from the cup, so I cannot see the sides of the cup at all, and if I can, I've probably spilled the coffee all over my lap and laptop. In which case you won't get to read this, (unless I use the 'recover option' to finish it off and post it, you may never know which has happened!!!).

Here's the sticking point... if I should lift the cup with my right hand, then the graphic is facing inward, and as I just pointed out (stay with me, I know the science of coffee cup imagery orientation is quite obtuse...) I can't see the sides, and so I can't see the graphic... but neither can anyone else, because when I'm drinking the picture is pointing at my crotch.

So to sum up where we are at this long winded moment, in the left hand, the image is out for others to see, in the right, the image is in for the crotch to see.

But wait. "Hey, run-on-sentence-dude," you're saying, I can hear you ya know, "but you said that when you're typing you use your inferior hand to lift the coffee." Your point being that the picture is operating correctly and effectively.

This is true, and it is quite effective when used thusly. But think about it. If I am working and the left handed is lifting in an absent minded way, I am most likely to not have somebody standing (or sitting) in front of me admiring my awesome coffee cup. On the other hand ('other hand' get it? oh ha. I really didn't mean that intentionally, it just happened, sorry.), if the cup is sitting so that I lift it with my right hand, utterly stopping any work or thought process, then I, myself can view and appreciate the image. For a split second before my nethers get to see the image they've seen dozens of times already if hafting ye ol' coffee mug with the right hand.

So in a lonely situation, having the graphic oriented for the left hand simply serves no purpose other than to prevent you, the very user of this coffee cup, from enjoying the image in any fashion, unless you hold it to your face with your right hand prior to chugging. I don't do that, maybe you do, but then I'm guessing you're left handed...

But if I am in a situation, socially, and I am right handed, like so many of us are, then science dictates an extremely large probability that my cup will be in my right hand. And the image will be pointing at my belly. Maybe pondering the fate of the cup's contents, if it could ponder, which it cannot since it is a lifeless object.

And now I have illustrated to you the conundrum of imagery printed on coffee cups. I am of the opinion that perhaps the Society of Coffee Cup Imagery Location has some kind of left handed Illuminati type hold at upper echelon of it's committee. Or maybe it's an anachronism from a time when left handers roamed the earth.

Either way, it bugs me out. I want to use my right hand the way God intended it. And I do not want to deny people watching me drink coffee the pure pleasure of my cup's totally sweet picture. Or clever phrase. Or brand marque. Or whatever else you stick to the side of one of those...

Stengah!

2006-12-19T00:46:00.000-08:00

So I pull up to 7-11, just because, and I head on in. Well, these two fine looking young women and I meet up at the door at the same time. (what timing eh?) On the way to the door I hear the two of them talking...

Now this would normally fall into the "Overheard #xx" category, but I haven't done one of those in like 6 months, and this is more than just two chowderheads blowing bubbles into the wind. Besides, I think the whole "Overheard #xx" idea is about defunct. It has some merit but it hasn't stood the test of time... who knows... maybe in the future... probably not...

Anyway.

As we approach each other, the short, blonde haired, high heeled in jeans with a black jacket on young 'lady' says, "Do they have Thanksgiving in Africa?"

Now hold it right there. I know we haven't even gotten very far into tonight's experience to really justify putting this one on pause, but I want you to savour this moment. As I did at that moment.

You really need to appreciate this, a chilly Monday night, around 11 pm, in Hollywood, walking up to a 7-11, the dark of night shattered by the surgery room blast of light from inside the store, two good looking girls (I almost typed 'women' but.... but.... oh HAHAHAHA! sure they 'looked' good, but... posters look good, but they're pretty flat... and they sit there and do nothing... overall they really contribute nothing, except to make a room more interesting to look at... kind of like a house plant...)

Anyway.

So, you get the image in your head right? Cold, dark, bright, orange and green. We come to the door at the same time, I get a bit of a sideways glance from one of them, the second and taller of the two, while the first one, the shorter one, asks, "Do they have Thanksgiving in Africa?"

Being the gentleman that I am, I reach for the door and open it for them. As you can predict with L.A. women I think I got a glance and nothing for holding the door. Well, I'd do it anyway, it's just the way I am made, but that doesn't mean they aren't uppity bitches. I think they were driving a Honda Accord or something similar (which is the appropriate Los Angeles method of judging somebody's inherit value as a human...) Poor things. I hope they find a sugar daddy soon, or they might have to resort to sexual favours for... oh, well, I suppose they already do that... it *is* L.A. afterall...

I mean, there's no law against being NICE. You know, I'd really like to meet their parents... the people that raised them...

Anyway.

So I open, the door, and they head in, and I take this question, "Do they have thanksgiving in Africa?" with a measure of shock. I'm cool on the outside, but on the inside I'm totally like, woah, omigod wtf byob mia afk bbq !?!

And I crack a smile. A smirk really, because I tried to stifle it but it went up on one side...

The second girl, the taller one, says, "Oh yeah, I'm sure they have mashed potatoes and gravy and..." I can't remember all the details, but she was being sarcastic, saying that she was sure that Africans (in general? there is a lot of them, and many different types...) were waaaayyyy into Thanksgiving.

They headed right on into the 7-11 and I came around the door slowly, you know, with a little style, mostly just to buy myself some time to crack up a tiny bit before getting into the store... Once inside I looked over at them, I think the taller one looked at me, not at the same time, but the way you can see someone look at you out of the corner of your eye, the way you just looked at them out of the corner of your own eye, as if, like in olden tymes, when two people, untrusting, suspicious of each other would "eye" one another...

But enough run on sentences...

So we did the subconscious eying of each other, and for a moment I wondered if they were fucking with me, because the conversation was so completely absurd. If they were, kudos to them, because I think they're idiots *and* I got a great laugh out of it. If they weren't, well, then I think they're idiots *and* I got a great laugh out of it.

Anyway.

While standing in line, I was behind an orthodox Jew, and he had a drink cup, you know, one of those big plastic jobbers with the top on them so you can put a straw in them... like the ones you find at Jack in The Box, or 7-11, but (And I am completely not shitting you) this thing was HUGE. It was as tall as a usual plastic novelty drink cup, but it was twice as wide. I'm guessing (And I am completely not shitting you) it will hold 2 liters of whatever... you know... an entire bottle of Coke, or something...

But that's not the point. The cup had a graphic on it, as most do, and this one was of "American Chopper", the show on Discovery or The Learning Channel or whatever about the bike builders, Orange County Choppers, where you get to watch Teutul Sr. and Teutul Jr. bitch and moan at each other for a whole hour while they (Teutul Jr. really, Mr. Teutul Sr. please don't kill me, I'm just being honest...) build a bike from mostly scratch...

I know I'm all wordy and shit, but the short of it is, I'm standing there behind an orthodox Jew, in 7-11, and he's weilding this fucking GIANT cup of soda advertising a show about hard core bikers... Only in L.A., right?

Anyway.

As I'm leaving I get to the door, the tall and short bimbos are still over in the corner get cash out of ye olde cash machine, I reach to push the door open, and in the corner of the window, the corner in the middle where the doors meet, just above the door handle pushing thingy there is a sign, I think it was a "now hiring" sign, and of course the sign was facing outside so the blank white backside of the sign was facing inwards towards the inside of the store...

I push the door open as I'm walking out, and notice, scratched onto the blank backside of the sign, were the words "help me out".

A message from the past, from a desperate person... an artifact from a moment unknown to you or I... a moment... help *who* out? It reminded me of the scribbled signs like "watch for the walkin dude" that Roland and company came across before meeting Father Callahan in the Wolves of the Calla.

It was a fitting end to my 7-11 adventure, because I certainly needed help out of that place... There are a few other funny things that happened while inside, but this is enough for you.

Anyway.

I'm watching Family Guy while writing this and Brian just ordered a 'Stinger, with a whiskey back' and I actually know what that is... sophisticated... and far older skool than Schlitz Malt Liquor...

... it's also the name of a kickass Meshuggah tune...

Lionel Richie... a Chia pet?

2006-12-17T23:53:00.000-08:00

Get your very own...

I was watching Futurama on Adult Swim tonight and saw this Chia commercial. I'd actually seen this commercial last year sometime and we remarked how much this Chia resembled Lionel Richie. I'd forgotten about it until it popped up tonight...

Thank God for tivo...

I am a ghost

2006-12-17T15:43:00.000-08:00

I float through walls. I fall through the floor.

Seeking hands reach to pull me down, but they can't grasp me.

I send clouds of birds into sudden flight.

I follow you into dark hallways. I move over you in the night.

I pass through your flesh.

I stumble unseen.

Draw a straight line for me.

2006-12-17T15:31:00.000-08:00

Grace, a hammer, has crushed my bones.
My back, bent, broken now.

Shattered, and nothing holds me up.

My heart flies to where my body cannot enter.
My eyes are blackened from the brightest, the brightest I have ever seen.

My hands burn still, from the softest of touches.
I cannot even twist away.

This is grace.

Chicken Pot Pie

2006-12-17T15:22:00.000-08:00

My cat, Chicken. He has a sister and she'll probably find her way onto this page sometime. They're a blast to photograph...

Both taken with my Nikon D70 w/ a Tamron 90mm 1:1 macro lens (which is a great lens, btw).

angst, itunes and radioactive warfare

2006-12-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well, first off, I finally got my answer to where the nukes were on BSG. Although I'm not real sure why Galactica did not use them in Exodus where it looked like it was the end for her and the entire human race. Seems like when you're backed into a corner and all is lost that would be a good time to pull out the nukes. But what do I know of strategics of space warfare against an aggressive robotic race of war machines?

It also appears that Galactica took possession of Pegasus's nukes at some point considering she now carries a lot more than the 3 she was left with in season 2. This makes sense if she took them for the assault to rescue the humans from New Caprica, but that only makes the non-use of them in that episode all the more perplexing. Oh well, she's got 'em now...

itunes 7 has gapless playback for albums such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, so that the songs flow into one another as intended instead of being chopped up. iTunes users the world over rejoiced. It's probably the most significant improvement to the software since it was born. Can't believe they missed that one... Oh well, we've got it now...

And angst? What would a blog of mine be without angst? Not really sure... happy? I just threw in angst to sweeten the deal a little bit, sorry if I mislead you... too bad for you...

Unitard!

2006-12-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

Look, I *know* it's not nice. But everyone laughs at it. Well, everyone I've showed so far. I have shit in my past that hurts, but you have to be able to laugh, if you don't, then what's the point of living. (you'll notice no question mark there, it's not a question dummy, get with the program already.)

That's just a statement of my position because I am, for myself, sensitive to the situation. That said, it's not an apology. It's a fuck you if you can't take a joke. Because this world has gotten to the point were it takes everything personally. Shit, I should be writing this rant in my other blog.

Besides, he's a cyclops... show me a God damn cyclops and then I'll consider feeling bad...

Aqua Teen Hunger Sketch

2006-12-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

Doodling about on my M7, watching ATHF... maybe I'll pump out a few more of these...

Creepy magic Homer

2006-12-09T15:15:00.000-08:00

I suppose if Homer had human hands... was some kind of wizard... and was mixing some kind of magical dust to perform some kind of magic... he might look like this... As the title suggests I find it rather creepy in a way. I think I actually drew the hands first, and in a fit of jack-ass-ed-ness added Homer's head onto the shoulders... I can guarantee you'll see more of that kind of crap from me...

Motherlode !!!

2006-12-08T14:30:00.000-08:00

I never really understood that word. I know what it means, I just never looked up it's etymology. This is the best example of what I came up with when searching for information on this word; basically, from 1800's and 1900's a woman's worth as a wife was measured by her proficiency at or abundance of weaving or sewing. Yeah, sexist right? Well, I suppose it's good that we moved them into the kitchen over time. Rugs and sweaters don't taste very good and are rather chewy.

Here's an old picture that I scanned recently for archival purposes. I did some minor cleanup on it. You can see (or maybe you can't since the image is so small) the top is a little blurry from the scan for some reason. Oh well.

And this is the meaning for that title and sideways discussion on it's origin. I found when looking over the image full size on the monitor how totally cool some of the ink word is, and figured I'd post a whole shitload of full sized examples...

This picture was done with a quill and ink. Pretty sweet eh? So the results is some very excellent ink lines and interaction with wet ink on ink. Kinky.

The following images are how the scans appear when viewing them at 100% in photoshop.

That one, leaves from a rose vine, shows what I was speaking of in a previous post about different artists' impact on me in terms of their line technique. I haven't read the book in a while, but that image reminds me of Frank Miller's Ronin. I'm not sure what tools he used, but the inky-ness of that book is extremely cool.

Not quite as 'clever' looking as the image before it, this one shows how I work. Usually quite fast and sort of 'scratchy'. Personally I don't care for the quality of this area, but it's still fun to look at.

Looks like some kind of mutated giant tropical tree. I imagine Flash Gordon would find this kind of leafy creature in one of his adventures.

And these two are from the thorny bits. Again, up close they remind me of some threatening alien world a space adventurer from the 1950's might encounter...

Friends

2006-12-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

Well these two obviously don't have a very honest relationship, or at the very least, it is a rather one sided honest relationship. I don't know about you, but I think that one guy looks like a real jerk.

I really enjoy little bits of sketches like these where you see something happening, but you don't know what it is specifically. One could spend a considerable amount of time conjecturing just what is happening between these two. Lots of fun. Yep.

Here's a full sized image of some of the detailed area as scanned on the flatbed. There is some real nice ink action going on. I'm going to guess this was done with on of those famous black (in this case, blue) pens with the five or six notches at the end of the cap, with blue ink (of course!). Those pens are legend... ah! found 'em. They are the uni-ball Rollerball. Simple. Elegant. Love those things...

You're going to see a lot of line quality detail images in this blog. I love that. I used to imitate my favorite artists, not so much the style, but the way the linework itself looked... maybe that is some kind of fetish?

getting nowhere...

2006-12-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

The whole point of that 'circles of hell' post was that, I had a moment where I felt like I had been continually banging my head against something... I won't go into the details... and had a sudden association with the level in Hell where those particular damned are sentenced to pulling and pushing heavy stones around. The actual thought I'd had was of someone continually rolling a stone uphill. I was relating to that in particular at that time.

But, as it turns out, the fourth level of Hell (the one concerned with weights) in fact contains two groups of damned who crash giant weights against each other, over and over again, in some kind of tug-of-war in reverse, until such time as their final judgment comes, and this punishment is levied against those who are consumed with material acquisitions... not what I had in mind. I was thinking more of an existential kind of block-headedness so I was pretty far off the mark there...

I know there is a reference to eternally rolling a stone uphill as some form of punishment or self-punishment, but I am unable to recall where that seed in my mind was planted... somebody out there knows...

Anyway... I sort of digressed in that post about my dream and never really got to the point.

Interestingly enough, when I looked up the punishment with the stones, I came across a reference to snakes, whereby thieves are continually bitten by snakes as their damnation, interred all the way down (get ready for some participial phrases!)in the 8th level of Hell, in the 7th ditch in the City of Dis. I find interest in the relationship between those in level 4 who are materialists, and those in the 7th ditch, thieves, who it could be argued are also concerned with material possesions...

Sucks for them...

The circles of Hell...

2006-12-07T00:16:00.000-08:00

I just remembered this.

I had a dream the other night.

Long time readers are sighing to themselves. Crap, not another blog about his damn dreams they say.

Well, as Kevin reminded me today, and as Dirty Harry used to say... "Cool it, hammerhead!" to which I'd like to add my new founded word 'hurtlock.'

So to you whiny recounted-dream-blog haters out there, I say, "Cool it, you hammerheads, or I'll put you in a hurtlock !!!"

Now that I've threatened you all with physical violence to stifle your moans of pain and anguish...

All I can really recall from the dream is... there were two snakes. Yeah, it's a snake dream. But these thing were strange. They were very short, two feet long at the most. Well, that's not that short by snake standards, but these things had a diameter of about 4 inches. Imagine a two foot snake with a body as thick around as your fist. Strange, I told you. Now add to that the head. It was not a snake head. I don't really know what it was. More like a rodent or something. And the teeth! These teeth were not snake teeth, they were not fangs. More like a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, much like a shark, or a piranha. And their bodies were colored bone white, and I think their eyes were white or bluish, and they weren't reptile or cat's eyes, the pupils were round more like a human's eye. Trust me, these things were fully creepy, unnatural, as something spawned from the sixth dimension...

So, yeah, these two snakes were bent on doing some kind of harm, a kind of evil. Pretty standard. And since it was my dream, I was the central reluctant hero. All very usual. I remember one I grabbed below it's head, and with a knife I had (it was some kind of serrated pocket knife, not really long enough for this kind of physical combat, but you make do with what you have at hand in dire circumstances...), I severed it's head from it's body. The blood was red, and sort of thick, not thick like human blood, but kind of gluey, like it was some kind of automobile lubricant. And there wasn't enough of it, the thing just didn't have enough blood in it's body compared to it's size, as if it simply didn't need the blood to run it's biological mechanism.

The second one I got ahold of, I had the intention of doing him in the same as his twin. I went to work on what would be the neck, but this one, perhaps because of my overconfidence due to my previous success, was quite a bit more difficult. Where the first put up little resistance due to losing his head in a rapid manner, the second writhed about violently, and was extremely difficult to hold with only one hand, especially considering I could barely get one hand around it's thick, squirming body. The knife didn't go cleanly through in one go, and he made a violent thrashing. I had to try several more times to finally do him in, resorting to sawing at the neck with the short knife. I never was able to cut through the body completely, but I finished the job nonetheless. It was like sawing through some kind of thick, ropey leather.

The exciting part of all of this, was my fearful resignation to the whole event. Certainly, an encounter of this type is rather unsettling, considering the violence, and adding to that the otherworldly creatures attacking me. It is interesting to me how little, or almost no panic I felt, as if I was operating on some kind of auto pilot, some other voice or force guiding my actions. "Grab the neck" and I did, "Sever the head" and I did. It was not a matter of fear, reluctance, or furry. No emotion can I clearly recall. There was a part, far back in my mind that was thoroughly freaked out at how entirely bizarre the whole thing was, but the front of my mind was operating like a robot performing a function without a passion of any kind.

I suppose the striking points in the dream are these personal observations. I don't have any kind of usual clever twist ending to this blog, I was mostly entranced by the funky and spooky monsters, and the strange, vacant way I dispatched them.

I guess I found myself almost as otherworldly as the monsters themselves...

vooting

2006-12-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Well, I did some research on vooting and came up with nothing. So bear with me. The only solid reference to 'voot' I found at urbandictionary.com, but that describes 'voot' as a variant of 'woot' mostly used by girls, for reasons I didn't really understand.

Now, 'vooting' describes the sound, or act of creating the sound of your upper teeth vibrating on your lower lip. It makes a kind of 'vvvvvvvv' sound. Some people can intuitively make this sound, probably even at this moment as you read this. Others, sadly will only show their teeth, and say "vvvvvvv". You see, the voot sound isn't produced with the throat at all. In fact it feels more like you're sending air through your nose and vibrating your upper palette. Perhaps someday, a government subsidiary will fund a scientific research project into the mechanics of vooting... until then these humble illustrations will have to suffice.

That is some random dude vooting. He appears quite good at it...

And this is a self-portrait of myself, vooting. I couldn't really tell you why I look so surprised, I can actually voot quite well.

I couldn't really work it into my fancy paragraphs up there, but I must credit Mr. Ethan Marak as responsible for coining, or at least, relaying the terms 'voot' and 'vooting'. He is also quite good at vooting, if memory serves... I'd link you to his sweet stop motion site, but I can't seem to locate it anymore. Bummer.

photos, two

2006-12-05T15:50:00.000-08:00

I take pictures with a camera also. There's a couple of pics of people that I like a lot. The first one is straight out of the camera with only a slight exposure adjustment, and the second has no alterations at all. I do like to play with photoshop, but most of the pictures I take that strike me like these two generally require very little fiddling. And I prefer to keep 'fiddling' to a minimum when presenting images as 'photos' as opposed to 'artwork'. Just a personal quirk.

Most pictures I take that I have much interest in are usually macro pics of flowers. They don't move around much and you don't have to talk to them and tell them how to pose. People are far more complicated...

three dudes

2006-12-04T14:22:00.000-08:00

These three dudes are up to no good, you can just tell by the looks on their faces, although one of them is less sure of his involvement in what the other two have planned. The one guy seems to be aware of this, and the other appears consumed by his own thoughts of chicanery.

Either that or they are about to go into a bar, and that one guy needs to get home to his wife...

bacon-face

2006-12-03T13:04:00.000-08:00

I used sit down at the computer, sometimes on break at work, sometimes at home or a friends machine, and paint or draw stuff just to distract my mind. If you happen to read my other blog I'm sure you'd understand that I basically think about everything too much, as long as it pertains to my own existance, and the complications thereof.

This is one of those. I sat down with Painter 5 probably and just started painting. One of those you never know what you'll end up with kind of sessions. This is what I got after a little while of screwing around. It never ended up becoming anything, I just went back to work and it just lingered around.

A friend of mine saw it afterwards and pointed out to me that it looked similar to Francis Bacon's style of painting. I didn't think of it at the moment, but after considering, it does kinda look like something he might do. Which is pretty flattering since I like Bacon's work alot.

How's this?

2006-12-02T16:54:00.000-08:00

First, I hope I don't leave anything out, this is really important, and I've been writing this post in my head already and usually the words and thoughts float out as fast as they float in. It's a rough life blogging things.

Okay, so let's try something new.

I'm a wordy sonofabitch. I started out thinking about an email I'm going to write, and it starts out simple enough and before I know it, it's a paragraph long and what I'm doing is writing a page just to explain the one sentence. It's like I can't just say the one thing. I have to make sure that every angle as to why I'm saying it is covered so there is no misunderstanding, or some kind of special insight into why I've been motivated to say the thing in the first place. It's like the impetus is more important than the thing itself.

I don't know. I'm weird.

I slept late today. I don't feel that good.

I posted a blog before this one.

I posted to my opialympia blog, which I keep for my artwork. That thing is picking up steam since I started it just a couple months ago. That makes me happy. The link is over there -> if you're at all interested.

I did some stuff on the computer afterwards. Some photo and art stuff.

I kinda did nothing for a little bit.

I've been feeling anxious today. Like having energy without focus.

No, like being aware time is passing and not doing enough with it. That's bugging me. Which is interesting because I was motivated to make myself a list of goals that I'd like to meet in the coming year. Not really a New Years resolution come early or anything, I just want to be more than I am right now.

I go to work, and that gives me purpose. I used to be married, and that gave me purpose. In the last year of the marriage all I was really focused on was getting us together, and starting a family. I don't have that anymore, and I'm not really sure what to do with myself. So I'm trying to get back to my creative stuff.

I discovered something about myself, something that was missing in my marriage, and I don't know how to describe it. I think... I know now how it is supposed to feel, how it is supposed to work, and now I see how I've been doing it all wrong. Well, wrong for me at any rate. I know without a doubt what I want or need in my relationship, should I ever be so lucky as to find it... There's more to this, but I'm not sure what to think of some of it. It has me confused, although it's not bad, there are just some contradictions that I have trouble wrapping my brain around. I know that it'll come clear in time. But I'm an impatient bastard, in truth.

It's like this: back when I first was separated, I had to by some new furniture. And I didn't want to buy cheap junk, I wanted stuff that would last a long time. Something substantial, something mine. One of the most important pieces of furniture, to me, is the coffee table. This is the center of a room, and it sets the character of a home, in my opinion. Anyhow, I knew what I wanted. I knew that when I saw it, I would know without a doubt that would be the coffee table for me. I turned into this high maintenance picky asshole. Angie took me around to I don't know how many furniture stores across L.A. and eventually she got frustrated with me. I think to the point that she didn't really want to help me look for one anymore. The process took a couple months, but I did find the thing.

One day I was walking down to the improv studio which is just a 5 minute walk from my apartment and literally 30 yards from my place, there was a furniture store, a little boutique place (it's not there anymore, not sure if it closed or just moved) and I just looked in casually and there it was. My coffee table. I walked in and bought it. And now it sits right here next to me. (I'm typing this on the floor on my 8 billion year old laptop, which I call a slaptop, because I have it plugged into my mixer which I use as a stereo receiver, so I can use it as an internet radio receiver. Pretty cool huh? Yeah, but my neck is starting to hurt and my right foot fell asleep.)

The point is, what I want in a relationship is that coffee table. I know it when I see it. I am terribly aware of that now, where as before I just wanted to find somebody to plug into that place in my life. Well, I realize now that won't work.

See how long winded that was? That's what I'm talking about. It's like some kind of mental vomit. I could actually go on more, but I feel like I've got it about 80% covered, and I just have to let the OCD take a break for a few minutes. It's hard to do sometimes.

And now I've forgotten a few of those things...

I dropped a small metal basket on my two toes next to the pinky toe on my left foot. I cracked the bones. What's funny is, when I walk around the house barefoot, they hurt all the time. I'm currently getting a slight shooting pain up the bottom of my foot. Great. But when I wear shoes they hurt much less. Strange.

This post (and the aforementioned email) started stampeding through my head as I was finishing up my shower here at 4 in the afternoon.

I took a 40 minute shower. I turned it on hat and sat down. I just sat there for awhile as my brain chattered on and on.

Now I'm going to run up to Whole Foods and by some food that's good for me, but which is a bit expensive... ah well.

But I think I'll also stop by Carl's Jr. and get a delicious hamburger. Man I'm craving one of those right now in a bad way.

I haven't eaten all day.

I'm staying home tonight. Alone. Maybe I'll watch a movie, or read my book. I'm reading Olympus, the second book to Illium, written by Dan Simmons. I'm quite a fan of his stories. This one is ridiculously complicated. Also, and I think I noticed this before but, Dan must have forgotten more classical literature than I've ever contemplated reading. That man has got to be one well read son of a gun.

Son of a gun. Now there's a phrase you never hear anymore.

I saw Demolition Man last night after Battlestar Galactica. 'Hurtlock' is a word that has joined my lexicon. Although they don't explain it in the movie, nor do we actually see one used, 'hurtlock' appears to be some kind of fighting move, such as a lock or hold in wrestling, designed to do nothing other than hurt the person receiving this lock. Too bad for them. They got put in a hurtlock.

Also, I really liked this phrase. I'm going to put it in random places from now on.

"You're the guy that was standing outside Taco Bell"

That's good stuff.

So there is a retardly long post that was really meant to be just a dumb list of diary like events from my day.

Cool words used in this post:

aforementioned
lexicon
hurtlock

the One, number 2

2006-12-02T12:59:00.000-08:00

...but I can't remember if this one was the actual #2 out of the handful of these sketches I've done, although I suppose it doesn't matter... This is a good example of what I like about giving an impression of detail rather than explicitly drawing it in.

He seems rather resigned that he is the one...

This drawing only exists as a digital file now and it got corrupted someplace and it was thouroughly wacked out. I had a couple different versions of it, each messed up in a different way. I fixed it awhile back in Photoshop, although I can't remember exactly what I did. I know I used the red version and processed it to remove the red and clean up a few edges, but I didn't do much else to it. I decided to leave it alone and there are still quite a few problems with it, namely line edges, where you seen a lot of white surrounding the strokes. If I ever use it for anything important I'd clean up and make it look like something, but for now this is the way it exists... poor thing...

And I just realized I lost his hair in the cleanup.

Crap.

sometimes I DO get it right.

2006-12-02T12:33:00.000-08:00

I realized that life is different than school.

In school you take tests, and if you get the answer right, you pass the test.

In life, you can get the answer right, and still fail the test.

I'm what? 33 years old? ...and I just now figured this out. I'm guessing you thought, from the sound of the title that this post would end a bit more upbeat...

4th down addendum

2006-11-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

Seattle went for the first down on fourth, not once, but twice in Monday's game.

Hell yes. That's why they're my team.

Proof that sometimes, sometimes you just gotta hang your balls out there and go for it all... and it'll be worth it...

the one, one...

2006-11-19T12:24:00.000-08:00

Well, this goes way back, about 8 years I believe. I'm not going to start in on how this began, but I have many of these things that say 'I'm the one' on them. I guess I'll upload them all eventually.

This is the first one I drew. I made it in Painter 5 I think on one of those old timey giant Wacom tablet that were like 8 feet across...

bubbles

2006-11-17T23:03:00.000-08:00

When a bubble forms, it pushes everything around it out and away from the center. Inside there is a place that is untouched by what is beyond the bubble. Often times, with most bubbles it's just air inside. And the bubble's surface tension holds it together until whatever stuff the surface is made of collects in one area more than another across it's surface, then the bubble bursts as air slips between the molecules.

Now, while it is a generally accepted notion that people suffocate when their oxygen runs out, this is actually not true. What happens when trapped in a space, like a bubble let's say, where there is no means of ventilation, the body expels high concentrations of carbon dioxide, and will die of carbon dioxide poisoning as opposed to asphyxiating. Asphyxiation is the deprivation of oxygen altogether, which typically occurs when no air can be taken into the lungs whatsoever.

My horoscope today told me I'm not satisfied with the way things appear on the surface, that I have a deeper vision of what love should be, and I want to 'manifest' it in my life. If I fail to achieve this, I may slip into fantasies to make it appear real in my imagination.

Great.

I suppose the case can be made that a bubble bursting may actually save your life...

hair-face and anime-boy

2006-11-16T22:20:00.000-08:00

These two go together only because they found their way onto the flatbed in the same go. I draw stuff like this in a space about the size of your hand, not really that big, but I guess about average. I'd say I tend towards the small size in terms of my drawings. The fun part about that is you generally use the texture of your line work to give the impression of details, rather than explicity drawing the details itself. It makes for some fascinating line quality. That is something you can expect me to make many posts about in the future....

4th down

2006-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

It's 4th down, and I'm not kicking. I never bought that strategy.

Kicking on 4th just says, 'yeah, we suck, we f'd up, here's the ball, we quit'

I don't care what you may think of that. I understand the strategy of containing the enemy, limiting his gains and all that, but you don't win if you don't gamble. And I'm just one of those unfortunate souls who refuses to give in way past the point of any common sense and cleverness, who refuses to let control go out of his hands. I guess that's right what it comes down to.

So, yes, I am a stubborn dumbass, and have been bitten by my strategy of not kicking on 4th when anyone half as smart as me would.

In fact more times than not I have had my teeth kicked because of my view on this.

And I can't stand admitting it, but life has been teaching me to kick on 4th.

I hate it.

It feels like bending my elbows backwards.

The end zone is conviction and nothing is standing my way, even if I end up mulched against an iron wall... which is the case, more often than not.

It's an ugly truth.

the trouble with war

2006-11-16T21:25:00.000-08:00

Aftermath.

Ghosts that haunt dark places, unexpectedly touching your shoulder as you pass by.

Scattered remains, charred; an assualt on the memories.

The smell, dry like charcoal.

Panic and fear are still dark waters at the bottom of your body, they are heavy stones dragging down your soul.

The place where your eye falls upon the broken landscape, searching.

For the defiant beauty, to peirce the dark veil, like a knife in reverse:

the wound of life across death's cheek.

*****

You know, it's not arranged very well at, as verse, or prose, but I think you get the idea. I wrote all this shit down awhile back actually, and it has sat around for some time... I guess you readers who read this all the time remember back in the day when I spoke of the 50 plus blogs that sit around like deformed aborted children, soulless husks belched up from the sixth dimension...

I'm trying to say its just a bunch of words, incomplete thoughts, emotions hacked at by a butcher possessed of too much zeal for his work.

But I think you get the point.

the dog from hell

2006-11-16T21:18:00.000-08:00

I can hear
a woman
down a concrete
corridor

sobbing

the ratcheting
of her cries

like fishhooks in her
lungs

or the wet slapping
of meat
on lonely cement walls

I can't get it right.

2006-11-14T13:59:00.000-08:00

If a hammer were... something... something important, good, and useful... and the nail was... something also important... important in a way that is wholesome and good, you know... it contains some nutritional value...

It seems all I've managed to do is smash my fingers.

Entropy and the machine

2006-11-12T17:25:00.000-08:00

I run. I'm a runner. It was really the best thing I was good at. I was fast. At my best I could pass the second fastest guy in high school, giving 110%, and could about achieve neck and neck with the number 1 guy pushing that to 120%. Damn he was fast. Somehow I felt like I was pushing myself until all my parts would just come apart and explode, like a race car will, pushed to the limit. And he never seemed as tweaked as I felt, but at least I made him work for it.

These were sprints. Long runs I wasn't much good for. I've been told by my doctor, who works to undo all the muscle damage I have now, that people usually fall into two categories, ones where the nerves fire all the muscles at once, and those were the muscles have a 'slower rate of fire' and so don't tire out so fast. I guess the trade is speed for endurance. I would've been a good receiver in football I suppose, but I'm so skinny I'd probably have been broken in half before getting to college.

At any rate, there isn't much exciting to tell here, expect that fifteen years after high school, it's not the muscles that bitch all day, it's the joints. Finally... finally they have all gotten together, organized some kind of committee and unanimously voted to go on strike. And I have to tell you, this time I better give into their demands. My ankles are bad, they've actually been swelling, which can happen with damaged ankles, and mine are hurting from the last couple runs I've gone on. I hope it's not gout at any rate, which is the other possibility... My knees are complaining equally. The right hates stairs... the left hates turning corners.

Goddamn bitches, the lot... but like public transportation, the city that is me would grind to hault if I didn't give them every benefit they ask for.

Ice seems to shut them up at least, but I need to find out what else they need. Maybe some good old fashioned deep tissue, acupressure, or myotherapy is in order... bastards...

Thank God I have them around...

meet Mr. Huxtable

2006-11-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

Mr. Huxtable is the quintessential boy in a wooden box. I'm not sure what goes on inside that box, but I am convinced somehow that it is essential for his continued existence. The two wheels is another thing that baffles me, but somehow he remains upright. I imagine he is some sort primitive iron-and-gears 'Segway' created by dark magic.

He was christened Mr. Huxtable by Kevin, and the drawing was done on a Toshiba Tablet PC in Alias Sketchbook, provided by Jurco. I need to get me one of those someday...

Rust.

2006-11-09T22:39:00.000-08:00

Seriously.

Okay, so what the hell has happened to Los Angeles? Daylight Savings Time has paid us a visit. Come and gone. All Souls has raised the dead and left them to rot in the past. And for the last several days, *everyone* in Los Angeles is driving like an old lady.

To be fair, many of them are, in fact, old ladies, but this isn't the point. Los Angeles has plenty of drivers to be sure, but what I've encountered is boggling my brain. They are driving slow. Real slow. Like 20 mph in 35 or 40 mph zones.

Anyone who has driven in Los Angeles knows that traffic is retarded, there's a hojillion drivers on the road every second second of the day, and gridlock can be had as readily as oxygen is acquired simply by expanding one's lungs.

Well, that explains why they drive slow, right? First off, what should be in the previous paragraph but isn't because I've already passed into this paragraph, is that, when given *any* opportunity, drivers here will stand on it.

God, I love that phrase, and I had no notion I'd use it here in this post. "Stand on it." Brilliant.

So here you have a fair understanding of Los Angeles traffic. Too many drivers who all want to go fast, right now. I'm sure you understand that this equation produces assholes. Let me explain.

((too many drivers)^2 * speed) / time = assholes

You see that science can predict what happens in large industrialized areas without futuristic public transportation. But that isn't the point. What science *cannot* predict, is the random periods of time when LA drivers drive ridiculously slow. As I stated five paragraphs ago, drivers having been driving at an unusually slow speed recently.

What you might expect to explain this is the aforementioned gridlock, however, I have observed no unusual increase in the volume of traffic. In fact, in one example I can give, there were four cars ahead of me traveling 10 mph under the posted speed limit. These four cars occupied up to a quarter mile. A QUARTER MILE. FOUR CARS. There is obviously plenty of space for four cars in a quarter mile to attain a speed matching a moderate amount of speed, up to and including 35 mph. But this isn't happening. Allow science to explain.

((too many drivers)^2) * (traffic volume + gridlock) / time = assholes * WTF?

The conundrum is that for inexplicable reasons people are driving too slow to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time.

And the result is that I am pissed off. I have places to go. You see, I too, am a LA driver. So get out of my Goddamn way. Now.

The point to all of this is, I haven't written a blog in nearly three weeks. I wasn't sure I'd remember how.

doing the robot...

2006-10-23T22:27:00.000-07:00

I was, in fact, standing in the kitchen doing the robot, but as exciting as it is depicted in this drawing, I was alone, pop-locking and concerned my neighbors would see me, considering my front door was open.

Where are the nukes ?

2006-10-22T13:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I usually blog about self centric existential whiny baloney, but today we're straying from the path. You say to yourself "oh Christ, finally!" I know, I know, this is the moment you've been waiting for through the nearly one hundred posts I've made to this blog. I'm sure you're going to be thrilled...

I am a huge fan of the television show, Battlestar Galactica. I'm sure many of you are. Some aren't because it's Science Fiction, and any right thinking mature adult would never watch Science Fiction, but they are above such childish nonsense. Or maybe they're just insecure. But enough insults for the neophytes...

The show has just began it's third season, and is better than ever. This is, in my opinion, the boldest television show I've ever seen. I'd liken it to the Soprano's when they arrived on the television scene. The human drama in BSG picks up where Soprano's left off. While Soprano's dealt with very personal details in a few people's lives, BSG does the same and adds to that the larger struggle of an entire society uprooted through a holocaust, trying to find order out of chaos, fighting fear of the unknown and fleeing before certain destruction at the cold metal hands of the Cylons.

The writing on this show is at the top of it's field. The writers never shy from making hard choices in their writing, many times having to face serious situations they've painted themselves into, killing a major characters, forcing these people to make hard choices they never thought they'd face, becoming idealists or murders under situations that leave them little choice, and we get to see them struggle with the dark consequences...

Alright, so I can't say enough to build this show up upon some Babylonian pedestal, but the big point I need to make in this blog is...

(This is spoiler material if you haven't seen the show up to the 4th episode of the 3rd season, so if you don't want to be spoiled, get the fuck out. Now.)

Where the hell are the nukes ?

At the start of season one, we learn that the Battlestar Galactica is carrying five nuclear warheads, and that Adama is concerned for the small number of nukes he has at his disposal, assuming that with the destruction of the Colonials entire civilization there are no more nukes to be had, so these nukes will need to be pressed into service only under the most dire of circumstances.

Adama first gives Baltar one nuclear warhead so that Baltar can use the radioactive material as a component in his 'Cylon detector'. Adama uses a second warhead against a Cylon Basestar at the conclusion of season one.

We go all of season two without seeing any of the remaining three nukes used. In addition, the fleet picks up a second Battlestar, the Pegasus, and we can only assume she also carries nukes, although we are never told such.

As far as I can tell, we start season three with at least three nukes, and we find the Colonials trapped on a planet in captivity where the Cylons have in effect created a concentration camp type scenario.

Adama takes the Galactica into battle against four Basestars, and we get the impression there is no way for the Galactica to stave off the onslaught of this many Basestars. The Colonials are rescued but the Galactica is crippled and in the fatal grip of the Cylons. It's at this time the Pegasus appears and drives off the Cylons long enough for the Galactic to escape, although she is lost in the battle.

But seriously, where the hell are the nukes? If Adama seriously thought the Galactica was about to be destroyed at the hands of the Cylons, and the fate of over 40 thousand Colonials was hanging in the balance, wouldn't he pull a couple of those bad boys out?

The topic is never broached. We as viewers have no idea what the status of these warhead is. This is the only major glaring point I have with the series at this point. I know its a silly little thing, but come on. Baltar gave the warhead he acquired for his detector to a Cylon agent and it was used at the end of season two to destroy the Cloud Nine. So it's not as if nukes just don't exist anymore.

Okay, I'm rambling now. But I'd really like to know what is up with this, because the rescue of the Colonials in the latest episode, the tactics used by Adama, these were outrageous and wholly unexpected. Beyond bold. I stood up out of my chair when I saw what was happening. The writers of this show gave to me the most amazing moment in my television viewing experience that I can remember.

But they must have forgotten they had a couple nukes to help them out. I'm curious to see if this is addressed in the show or not...

It's all about the pie...

2006-10-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

God gave everyone a piehole, but some of us use it more appropriately than others.

Today is pie day at work. I love pie. Pie loves me. This blog reads at the 3rd grade level.

Last night I went by Jack in the Box and bought a Pumpkin Pie Shake.

Today I had pumpkin pie for Pie Day at work.

I love pie.

You should too.

not altogether together

2006-10-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

I'm hungover, but not in the sense that I am in pain, just tired and a little slow.

Actually that's only partially true. A long time ago, I was swimming in the ocean off the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It was... 1993 and a hurricane had come through the week before, so there was a lot of chop in the water. The waves were coming in diagonally across the beach. Not that it matters I suppose.

I was standing in the water about waste deep facing the beach saying something to my girlfriend of the time, can't remember what, and I didn't notice this right away, but, the water started draining out to sea very fast, until the water level had gone down to my ankles. I looked down to my feet, wondered what this was all about, and turned around to see where the water was going. When I turned around my eyes followed the water from my feet, all the way to the top of the wave that was about twice as tall as me. Before I could react the wave picked me and drove me head first toward the ground. I was facing chest down, underwater, and the power of the wave was trying me bend me backwards, my legs over my back, over my head.

If you have ever snapped a branch across the shin of your leg, you know the feeling of the wood the moment just before it gives way and breaks in two.

That is how my spine felt at that moment. Spooky.

I fought as hard as I could, not to break, not to drown and as fast as it came the water left. I lifted myself out of the water disoriented and my right arm hung useless at my side. It wasn't broken, but it had been dislocated at the shoulder. Only for a moment thank God, but what a fucking strange pain that is. My arm slowly recovered but for awhile afterwards I had spams in the muscles, and in certain positions my arm would get weak and couldn't hold its own weight. I never experienced a dislocated shoulder before, and I really wouldn't recommend it. It's not the worst thing I've ever felt, but it is strange feeling...

So I wake up this morning and try to lift myself up out of bed and damn if that arm didn't feel exactly like the time it was dislocated. I remember all of the night as far as I can tell, so I'm not really sure what I did to screw up my shoulder in such a way... maybe it will always be a mystery.

Also, there was a sharpie pen in my bed and a business card duct taped to my shirt.

It was a good night.

Wait for it....

2006-10-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

My eyes hurt from 12 hours at work.

I got a thing on my neck. like a nerve thing. I think it's like the one Homer had before he turned into the Incredible Homer.

My cat went nuts and I gave him the evil eye then we got into a staring match for like a full two minutes. FTW

My left hand fingers are now dumb from too much work. I can't type. They just sort of spasm when I try to move them. I wish I was joking here.

For the first time the other day, I actually HAD to wear my glasses to see what I was doing... *sigh*

My mouse scroll wheel seems to be set to scrolling an entire page at a time. That's a pain. I'll have to fix that at some point when I'm not lazy. Probably never.

I'm tired.

I think that's about it.

Oh wait.

The good news is, I'm having a shitload of friends over for a party on Friday the 13th. I am going through tons and tons of photos and art for opialympia (I am very happy about this, although it is a load of work...) and uh... I'm healthy. Oh, and work is really cool right now.

Things are generally good. It's just that nobody jumps out of their skin when it's good, we usually just complain when things are bad.

It was a lot easier to type the gripes up top, but I had to work at the happy stuff. Although I'm glad I did now...

Spare me your words

2006-10-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

Unbridled anger.

You. You coaxed me. You lured me. I trusted you. Fuck you. Fuck you so very much.

Then you. You. You were full of lies. To cover your shame. But that didn't stop you. Your shame was more important than your words reassuring. Fuck you.

You too. Of the many many things you didn't want me to see, hiding all this with your words. How much more do you keep under cover, in the shadows, wanting none to see? Deceit. Fuck you.

And you. With your candy coated shit. It has no nutritional value for me. It has only rotted in my stomach. Flattery gets you to the 8th level of hell, only one level above the frozen throne of Satan himself. Fuck you too.

You over there, somewhere. You have no words. Where are your words at all? Where are *you* for that matter? You said something once. Your words should be so important, more important than most others. Where are you? Well you get one too. Fuck you.

I always knew what 'unbridled anger' meant, but I never before today picked up on the metaphor. What was, for me, a simple way of expressing anger above anger, is now an elegant manner of relating the unstoppable fury, the reptilian, mindless rage. Beast set free.

Some days are just darker than others.

Veritas Vos Liberabit

precipitation

2006-09-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

After watching Constantine the other day, and posting that nonsense about cats and God and baptism and Dave Brubeck, I grabbed up my said Dave Brubeck and jammed it all the way into the freaking CD player. Yeah, I still gots a CD player, but I had to hook it up. So I hooked it all the way up and blasted that. Man I love that album.

Alright.

So afterwards I put in Charles Mingus. Excellent.

Then it happened.

I have a Technics 5 disc changer from 800 billion years ago. It is the kind with the huge tray and the 5 disc carousel that goes around in a circle. Fairly primitive as far as CD changers go, but I sort of have a romantic draw to those things. Something about it's limited capacity and the fact that it spins around in a circle in such an inefficient manner...

Charles Mingus' Mingus Ah Um wrapped up and the changer changed (as it is wont to do, being a changer after all, changing is it's primary function, second only to the actual playing of CD's... can you have a secondary primary function? Is that some kind of paradox?) and it returned to Brubeck's Time Out! as those were the only two CD's in the machine...

I let Time Out! go for a little bit since I started the album at Take Five, the actual song played in Constantine, because, having my memory tickled in just such a way, I needed to hear exactly that. But as Take Five approached, I decided it was time to move on to another CD, and I contemplated for a moment.

Now I know I'm going on and on like I am some sort of jazz guru, or aficionado, or enthusiast, or some other adjective, but I'm not. I don't know all the specifics of who did what, who wrote this or that and all the stats of the different players... I just like jazz. Not that noodly new age crap. But real jazz. I like old jazz from 100 years ago. I like the modern improv jazz. I like Count Basie, Monk, Miles, Coltrane. That shit rubs all over me like some kind of hot oily feminine hands caressing my body into some warm sleepy state where I can no longer tell the time, and I forgot how I got there...

But really I don't know a lot about jazz, or all the great musicians and singers. I fall into the category of "I know what I like". And I know it when I hear it. I guess that's the best way to know about anything, really. I've heard a ton that I don't know what it was, or how to ever find it again... but that's how things go sometimes.

Now that I've branched off so far you forgot what the hell I was talking about, Mingus finished off, the quaint roundy CD changer returned to Brubeck (and who can blame it, really?), I figured it was time to move on to the third disc of the night. So I went through my (not) extensive jazz collection and said "wow" and pulled out Sun Ra's Space Is The Place. Man, what a nutty piece of music. It is a beautiful assault on sanity, coaxing circles out of squares. And it struck me just then.

I am a huge fan of the Swedish band, Meshuggah.

Deep breath here. I have no idea what the hell you, reader, are about, but Meshuggah is one of the heaviest (death) metal bands ever to torture the audio spectrum. I will not attempt to convey here what they sound like. Words will fail. I assure you.

My first experience with Meshuggah was in 1998. On a fluke I bought Meshuggah's Chaoshpere, put it in the (quaint 5 disc roundy roundy changing) CD player and thought to myself, "Self, what the hell is this shit?" I couldn't make out what was going on, heads or tails, I couldn't find the rhythm, I didn't hear the melody. It was noise. Just like all those stodgy old parents had been telling kids for the last thirty plus years...

I took it out, put it in it's (jewel, love that term) case, and there it sat, like a festering seed, for six months.

Then one day... for some unknown reason, much like the time I actually bought the CD, I took it out and jammed it into the CD player. I figured I bought the damn thing, don't know why, but, I'd give it another go. The ol' college try, whatever the fuck that is.

And...

BAM! It hit me over the head. It was like the mirror shattered and now I saw past the world reflected back at me. I know that sounds deep and transcendental and whatever the hell kind of experiential crap you want to call it... but musically I was floored. Suddenly I heard what they were doing. I heard the drums, like some kind of seven armed, lumbering elegant beast, falling and catching itself, the massive guitars grinding, crashing and then flying, the two meeting together in accord with one another and falling back again. I don't mean to, but I think of Mozart, and I am no master of music theory, but just in regards to his complexity, how he was able to take so many varied melodies and have them compliment and dance with each other...

In a very different way, Meshuggah accomplishes the same effect. Do they sound like Mozart? No. Definitely not. If you like classical music will you like Meshuggah? I highly doubt it. Seriously. Am I a nut job? Yes, but my point is still valid. There are a few of you out there, who's minds and musical tastes are so freaking open and broad that you will listen past pounding drums, or tender flutes or jackhammer guitars, or ferocious pipe organs, and hear the music, hear the pattern, the rhythms inside rhythms, and the melodies flirting around them, and you'll be satisfied like the eater of a fine banquet.

What does this have to do with Dave Brubeck? Very little. When I listened to Sun Ra's Space Is The Place it sounds just like a horn and vocal version of what Meshuggah plays. They are so close together... and yet the instrumentation keeps them polarized. Kind of sad that the timbre of grindy guitars or gentle horns carry more weight for most people than the music itself.

Either I am highly evolved, musically, or I have really lost perspective. I don't know which. All I can say is, I know what I like when I hear it, and both of these strike the same chord in me...

Fundamentally astounding.

Crosswalks are not babysitters.

2006-09-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

I cannot recount how many times I've seen this lately in Los Angeles. This place has the most brainless fucks of any place I've lived. I *can* tell you that stupid people are everywhere, but this just takes the cake...

Women who push their babies in a stroller out in front of a moving car, REGARDLESS that the light is red and that they have the crosswalk sign and the right of way, WITHOUT LOOKING at the car to check that it is actually stopping, let alone taking notice of them, are FUCKING STUPID. God gave you a neck you stupid bitch, use it. IT IS YOUR CHILD'S LIFE! Stop pushing it out in front of a moving car without first checking that it's safe. For fuck sake.

So many people in the world aren't worth the carbon they're made of.

Finally!

2006-09-24T23:06:00.000-07:00

You know, the great advancement in men's rings has been the inner contour. If you do not know about this grand invention I'm guessing you've never been married. It's a nice little bevel on the inside edge of the ring that improves it's comfort. My wedding ring had this, wherever that thing went to...

Mankind has been beveling things for ages, but only recently have we begun to bevel rings in an effort to make the lives of men the world over such a gentler experience.

I have owned, for probably 6 or 7 years, a ring, which has been the reverse of this comfort contour. It is a rounded dome shaped exterior, with a flat inner surface. This results in an edge on the ring which points directly at the finger. It is quite sharp and rather *un*comfortable. I cannot tell you exactly why I bought the damn thing in the first place. It also had a design cut into the top that looked vaguely like some sort of celtic batman symbol.

This ring has done nothing more that turn my finger green, snag my jeans or anything else it would come in contact with, stab my finger with that silly carved out design that is a copy of nothing that exists in the world, and generally cause trouble wherever it would go. Nevermind that everyone who saw it would coo over it, telling me how cool it looked.

Looked.

I hated that little bastard.

Well, as luck would have it, I was in a hurry to put on my rings this past Saturday as I was about to go onstage, and wouldn't you know it, as I pulled all five rings of mine out of my pocket, there goes one of them spinning across the floor, behind some ladders and assorted debris, under a rickety wooden step and off into some magical land I cannot enter.

Of course you know the ring I'm talking about is that pointy edged little fuck I've been toting around like a dumbass for half a decade.

For a second I thought to myself, oh shit, I lost one of my rings. And as I resigned myself that it was just gone and to accept the situation, I realized it was the most hated of my rings. I suddenly understood this was a good thing, something that should have happened a very long time ago.

Goodbye you little fucker. I hope nobody finds you.

News Of The World !

2006-09-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Again, this was written some time ago. I was reluctant to post it. But by popular demand, here it is. Have fun.

****

I was happy today. Then I cried. But I had a good reason. And I'm not going to tell you what it is. But then I was happy again.

I ate two peaches. You have no freaking idea how difficult it has been for me to learn how to properly let a peach ripen. Somehow I manage to always make them stay hard, and then they immediately rot. Don't ask how, I don't know, it's just a fortunate trait I seem to possess. And so I had two peaches turn out great. Soft. Juicy. Actually very juicy. I made a delicious mess. At work on my desk. Oh well. I also ate an apple.

I had coffee. A bunch. Well, a bunch for me. I really haven't been much of a coffee drinker as I've gotten older. Lately I've made a swing back. I think it's the proliferation of fancy coffee joints, like Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Tully's, Peets, et al. in the last ten years that has brought me around. I used to just drink black regular coffee. Pretty harsh by today's standards. Sort of like back in the day when the only martini you could get was a gin martini, and not good gin at any rate. I think fluid intake for pleasure has reached an all time high in its paletteability in recent times. I just made up a word.

Today is Saturday and I'm at work, but I got a moment to write. I write a lot these days. In fact, I think I'm also writing a book. I haven't written in years. A book would be a nice accomplishment in this life, whether or not it were to be published. I can't really imagine being published. I have no point of reference for that sort of thing.

Sometimes I feel like Carrie from Sex and the City. I mean, I'm a guy but she's got all those shoes. But that's not it. I come to a time in my day, alone, and mulling over myself, my life, events in my day or week, in my friend's lives around me, you know, *everything* and sometimes something grows from whatever seed has been planted through those times. It's really nice. I haven't written much in a *very* long time, and although I'm exceedingly rusty, I am starting to feel some of the cobwebs coming loose. Very cool when you see progress, especially when it's back towards something you once had. Like getting back into shape. That is something I've done over the past two years. I went from being the heaviest I've ever been in my life, to almost the weight and physical condition I was in during high school. Of course the cardiovascular system is lagging the most, I'm still pushing it a bit. When I'm not working overtime and sitting at a desk. In the dark. Turning into a blob.

Man that paragraph rambled.

So, back to Carrie. I get to this moment, sometimes everyday, sometimes only occasionally during the week and I am compelled to right this self aware thoughtful whatever. Honestly I think I am closely examining my life. I used to write fantasy stories, horror or scifi, or horror-scifi. Now I am more interested in writing what reflects real life, real people and real experiences. Or something close to that. It's actually pretty satisfying. As if I am now swimming with the tide, instead of fighting my way against it.

I don't know. I have been tending to write stuff like this and it feels strange because it's new to me, never having kept a journal or diary or anything like that. Keeping a journal always seemed laborious to me. And silly. Today I ate a peach. Today I talked to my mother on the phone. Today I fell on my head. Strange. But that's pretty much what I'm doing right here. I find myself in a strange place that I don't recognize and I'm looking around wondering how I got here and I have no map of the terrain.

I wear my great-grandfather's ring on my wedding-ring finger. To keep girls away. It's just a ring he had, not his wedding ring. It is strange I know, but I need to be alone in that department. Things have changed for me regarding women. There is one out there, maybe, and that's how it's going to happen. I'm done screwing up that part of my life. However long it takes. It's just how my guts feel. It's an odd feeling, I've never experienced it before, and it isn't unwelcome. Like the change as I get older, peaches or apples taste better than candy did when I was young. They're better for you and that's what has to happen in my life. Something a bit more healthy. If I can't have something good for me I'd rather go without. I guess that's quite a bit different than, almost everybody I know. Except for one man. He is a friend of mine I don't see often, but he a *great* human being. I look up to him in many regards. I don't think he even knows this... that's pretty cool.

I'm becoming rather self absorbed. Well, for me it seems self absorbed. I've always been pretty modest. I never cut up in class. I always kept to myself when I was young and drew pictures or wrote stories. The older I get, the more of a jackass I've become. I do things to piss people off, but only if it makes them laugh in the end. I drive my co-workers nuts. I seem to be a late bloomer class clown of some kind. I think it's just an attention thing. I never wanted attention before, and now I do. Self-absorbed. For some time (about 6 years now) I've been having pictures taken of me toasting with my coffee mug. I have no idea what that's about, I just do it. But it's all about me really. Maybe I'm on some voyage of self discovery as they call it. I guess we all are in a way. I just never figured it out until recently. Better late than never.

I have a touch of bronchitis right now. I guess I had some sort of lung thing after I was born. Oxygen tent and that whole bit. Now I get bronchitis on occasion, but usually only if I get run down. Stress and drink will bring it on, two things that attack your immune system. Seems reasonable, right?

I use gmail to write my blogs. I think that's weird. Actually it's not. Gmail is accessible where ever I go, so it makes sense. I have FOURTEEN blogs at one stage or another right now in my drafts folder.

I dress nice. The nicest I've ever dressed. I like it. Hell, I used to think suits were for slaves, and now I'd wear one everyday, because they kick so much ass. I never realized before how rich the world is and how much it has to offer. I was always so busy going against the grain. I never listened to 'radio'. I didn't even own a TV until 6 years ago, and at that never really watched it. And I *definitely* didn't watch anything popular. Except Simpsons. But I didn't like them until season 3 or 4 anyway, because everybody else *did* like them. I just couldn't ever be like anybody else. I still think I'm not like anybody else, but now I've pulled my head out of my ass and I've realized I don't have to try so hard out of fear of being mistaken for a MTV or GQ clone, to be different, to just be myself.

I'm growing a beard. For no good reason. We'll see how long this lasts. I look quite a lot like my father with it. Which actually startled me in one photograph I saw. The resemblence was freakish. I don't think I look that great with a beard. I mean, I can carry it off just fine, but, personally, I think I am more handsome when shaved. Which is how I prefer my face. Clean shaven is the way to go lately. I guess the beard is like a time out in the facial hair grooming department. I think this goes with the ring wearing I mentioned above. Chicks in general don't dig beards. Maybe I should just stop showering. Or even putting on clothes...

I was onstage tonight. I perform improv. Not stand-up. I have no desire or talent for stand-up. But improv with a group, creating scenes and stories out of nothing, live. It is a crazy rush. As much as playing any sport I've tried. It can be a bit physical, I was thrown around a bit tonight, you know, being stabbed, punched, hit in the face with a door, falling down an escalator. Of course all those things are make-believe, but you're still falling and rolling for real on the stage. I've come off stage with a few scrapes and bruises. One torn tendon and a twisted knee once. That's really rare though, and certainly nothing near what could ever happen for you in a football or soccer game. But it's not even that, although it's fun to be energetic and create this worlds that become very real physically, it's the psychological rush. You have to pay a lot of mental attention, to what your teammates are creating, what they are saying, what story is evolving, who their character or personality is. And then you have to make appropriate choices, and grab random accidents that happen and explore them and bring life to them. All these things in a split second. It really is quite a rush when it is going well. I'm so happy to be involved in this. And the people I have around me here in this are some great people.

*Addition to the improv injury list: I got backhanded in a big way this past weekend by a girl. Damn. I tasted blood. My gums are black and blue. Heheheh. She got a good one in on me... accidentally right?*

Life is good. For all of it's crazy unexpected twists and turns.

Something snapped in me recently. Something in my brain. It's been straining for a long while I think and finally... finally it gave up. It couldn't resist any longer. And you know what? It's sort of like a spinal adjustment, or cracking your knuckles. It actually feels good, although I'm not sure how to navigate it just yet. Like that first time you ride a bicycle. It sure is fun and exciting, but you haven't quite figured out how to work with the machine, so the two of you can get along down the road without one of you messing up the other. I'm taking a few spills, but I'm also experiencing a new joy I don't think I've felt since... in a long damn time. And now with the added perspective of experience. Like having some lifetime of knowledge and also getting back a bit of that childlike naivety or wonder.

That is the current state of affairs, this second weekend of September '06. Whether or not you care is trivial. I suppose if you've read this far I must hold some sort of fascination, whatever that may be.

It's interesting to put my day into perspective and see what is going on in my life. How many of us actually take a moment to look at this stuff, things that we choose and things that happen everyday that are forgotten as soon as they pass? And something that I find fascinating, is just how much stuff I am missing in this. There has to be five times as much stuff that swims past my conscious mind while trying to capture these few moments, than what is actually here in writing.

For the record I am rather uncomfortable with writing out my life like this.

Actually, I think ratbaby is right...

2006-09-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

this was originally written several weeks ago. not that it matters, I'm just uptight about details. humour me.

****

I went to a party this past weekend. I was invited because there were *too many* girls there and they were trying to level things out. I don't know any of these girls, just two friends and the birthday girl. Well, no shit, there was a truckload of women and a Smart Car-load of men.

If you don't know what a Smart Car is you are truly unrefined. Or like me, you're a fan of dragsters and formula 1 cars. Basically a Cro-Magnon Man. Thank God there's a few of us left. Seriously, I'm half drunk typing this right now, thinking about girls. It's taking me about 8 hours to write up three paragraphs.

The point is Smart Cars are really small. They hold two adults and chimp. And maybe a ferret. And some goldfish, but not in bowl. In a baggie.

Anyhow, a lot of these girls were typical LA fair, talking about what cars guys owned (bleh). And they were overdressed for a birthday party in an apartment, more like for clubbing and fishing for the flavour of the week. I didn't think I'd have anything to say, as I am 100 % unavailable, but I ended up talking with a lot of them. A couple of them (not the night on the town ones) were enjoyable to talk with. I swear three of them wouldn't leave me alone. I would excuse myself to talk with other people and invariably they found their way back into conversation with me. I'm sporting a beard. Yo estaba tomando bastante. I keep my great grandfathers ring on my ring finger. I mean, I don't think any of that is a particular draw... I don't know how this shit works. It was a lot of fun, but I certainly don't understand the dynamic... and none were take home to mom material. Not for me, I mean.

So now, I claimed Cro-Magnon status just a paragraph ago, but you know, I still have a soft fleshy heart beating behind my rib cage... and it is running the show right now. If the rest of you Cro-Mag's want to fight about it.... I own a baseball bat. And a sword. Let's go.

skinball

2006-09-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

okay.

first off, I have no idea why I'm writing this.

in the time between when I had my great IDEA and the browser loaded, I forgot. Yes. That is correct.

Now, I am very *smart* but I have the attention span of a rock.

It had something to do with cheese. Maybe chocolate.

I use a microplane to shred most things, including cheese. If you like to cook, and you don't have one, go buy one. Now. You are a caveman if you don't have one. Seriously, these things are unbelievable. I own one and I still shit my pants every single time I use it. Damn.

If you do not know what a microplane is, well then, shit. You don't cook. Or maybe you do, and you wish cooking was 'better'. If you don't wish it to be better, then stop reading right now and get the fuck out. Fuck you. Get out and stop reading.

But if you do wish cooking was 'better' then read on.

Okay. I am not a cook. I enjoy cooking. I know a few 'tricks' that help me seem like I know what I am doing in the kitchen. Well, it makes me look good, but more importantly, it makes the food taste better. One tool that helps this situation is the microplane. My stepdad demanded I get a microplane for 1 million years before I finally bought one....

And then I bought a microplane.

Shit.

This thing rocks. It rocks all day and parties every night. Even when I'm not there, it's partying. It is rocking the Casbah and the shareef is shitting his pants this thing is so cool. Seriously. Damn.

I know that sounds sensationalist, but damn dude, go buy a microplane if you spend more that FIFTEEN minutes in the kitchen. If you DON'T, then WHAT THE FUCK are you doing all the way down here in this blog ???

shit. come on. have some self respect. get out if you don't like cooking.

now.

get out.

bitch.

okay. so the creepers are gone. and the hard core cooking weirdo's are still here, and I have to tell you....

microplanes kick so much ass.... there may very well be not enough ass for them to kick.

BUT !!!!

be careful.

seriously.

microplanes are sharp. and precise.

and if you snag your finger you will end up with a tiny, unidentifiable skinball in your food.

skin is delicious like any other food such as chicken, chicken skin, turkey, turkey skin, pork, pork and sausage and pork and bacon and what not...

but if you don't want to eat human, then be careful.

it's really easy to get some skin in there.

with great kitchen tools comes great responsibility.

and so.....

You don't need a *microplane* to serve human skin to your friends.... but it helps.

farsighted

2006-09-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

About ten years ago I went to renew my driver's license. At the time I was living in North Carolina and the DMV I was directed to, was a strange building where the reception area was actually quite small, and you walked up to a desk much like going to a teller in a bank. Yeah it was exactly like that, a bank, except they weren't behind bulletproof glass. You went up to the desk and did your business, whatever that was, I can't remember exactly, and then you went into a line. A cattle chute of some type for drivers and what not. Quite a bit different than the take a number and sit method in Los Angeles.

What I really found interesting is what took place after the line. About 2/3rds of the area inside the building (this building had no rooms, it was one huge room) were wood desks, evenly spaced and all facing the same direction. Perhaps I am part of a generation that can still manage to recall, if only from photographs, the fifties and maybe sixties of the 20th century where large business would have armies of people at desks, toiling day in and day doing... I have no idea what. Not only this throwback to another time occupied the space, but manning these desks were none other than actual highway patrol officers. *That* seemed rather peculiar to me.

So you get called from the line and head to the appropriate lawman behind his desk, where he was outfitted in a full patrol uniform with all his gear. And again, unlike Los Angeles where you are handed a test or booklet or paperwork or whatever and return to your chair to attend to these papers, in this particular DMV you sat at the desk in front of the patrolman while taking the test, as if performing some sort of interview. Which I guess it is in some perspective.

You finish your papers under the eagle eye of the law's handyman and hand it back. If everything is in order you take the road sign/eye test. This is a peculiar one I hadn't seen before. I've seen the machines but not used exactly like this. If I am correct (and it has been awhile since I've been in a DMV) in LA you look into the eye machine just for an eye test. In NC the machine was used first to test your knowledge of roadsigns and their meanings. Once that task was overcome, finally came the eye test.

Straight away I'll tell you I tested at 20/14. And ever since that day I've bragged about how great my vision is. And truly it was pretty good. I had always been able to make out details just a little further than most people I knew. In high school I had read the line below the 20/20 mark in the dark. Again, I was rather proud of myself. (That wasn't an actual test, we were all just waiting to get our blood pressure taken. Not sure why...)

There is another thing. Some of you may have this also, I know many people who do. I am under the impression it is not uncommon. I have what I've been told are floaters. If you've ever looked into a clear blue sky and saw faint blurry black spots floating around, well, those are floaters. I've had them as long as I can remember, and usually I can't see them due to the staggering amount of visual information coming in, but if I'm looking at the sky as mentioned or a blank wall for instance, they are always present.

I asked an eye doctor friend of mine what they are. I hadn't expected his response. Retinal detachment is what he told me it was. Obviously, that sounded rather alarming. He lives in another city some 6 hours as the car drives, so he recommended I go see an eye doctor. To spare all the details, I hadn't been to an eye doc in about 800 years, so a friend sent me to hers and he was very good and friendly. So now I have an excellent eye doctor.

What he told me is the retinal detachment is about normal for someone my age and not to worry. But what he said next I wasn't ready for.

He told me I'm farsighted.

Now hold up a minute. I have great vision. If 20/40 is bad, and 20/20 is good, then 20/14 is better right? I guess a decade after 20/14 I am becoming a bit farsighted. I never in 800 billion years thought that when the second number got smaller that things got worse in the opposite direction. I guess you shouldn't assume so much in your life...

Now that I am aware of this I have some mild corrective glasses, basically reading glasses, to bring things just a bit closer to my eye. And what I've noticed since, is, my eyes don't hurt. Like any mild chronic pain you have for any length of time in your life, you adjust and don't really notice it. I hadn't realized that my eyes were straining and I had this dull ache behind my eyes from straining to focus up close. You see, I work in a field that requires me to focus, for 8 to 10 hours a day, about 2 feet in front of me, looking at a flat surface. And even when I look up, the farthest distance I get to look to is only about 30 feet away.

I never thought I'd have glasses.

In other news, I have about 14 unborn blogs sitting around. Many of them will most likely never come to completion. But the one I just wrote yesterday is the longest blog yet and it's some kind of personal inventory of the current affairs in my life. Very diary like. Like I said, personal. And it's just sitting there. Out of the 14 it's the only one that is fully finished and ready to post, and even though I want to share the fruits of my labour, it's sitting right on the fence of just how much and how detailed of the stuff that is my life I want to share.

I don't know what to do with it. I'll probably just post it. You'll laugh because I'm probably just in my head about it. I think it's the shear amount of information in it. Where this blog deals with one or two topics, that blog moves from one to the next to the next to the next.

And it's a little deeper than eye exams.

Good vs. Evil

2006-08-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

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 !

2006-08-30T02:33:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-25T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-24T19:20:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

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

Atomic Lavamen

2006-08-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-08-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-15T22:52:00.000-07:00

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...

2006-08-15T00:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-14T22:02:00.000-07:00

"...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

2006-08-09T13:56:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-08T23:41:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-06T09:26:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

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

2006-08-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

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...

Overheard No. 6

2006-07-27T21:42:00.000-07:00

Said the man to his very young daughter...

"I would like a new mommy too, but unfortunatly I think we have to keep the one we got."

Woah. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Really though, I understand men or women wanting out of their relationships, but when the kid is asking for a new mommy.... I mean she was all of 4 or 5.... It was ridiculously funny at the moment, how absurd the conversation between parent and child about the other parent,... But looking back on it... Damn.

Overheard No. 5

2006-07-25T21:07:00.000-07:00

"So you're saying I have a girl name? Thank a lot mom! Now I'm a woman ??"

Seriously. What the F is up with mom? I wonder if he wears her clothes when she's not around...

It's like.... an answer

2006-07-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Over one hundred years ago, I posted a blog named "It's like....." and it was, although it seems like I get stuck in this style, a bit juvenile. It was all transcendant, about a deserty place and flowers and full of questions about would a flower grow in the desert and transform the desert into a lush grove, or would the lifeless ground swallow the life of the flower, leaving it grey and shattered....

Well, really, you should just leave the desert and move to more fertile ground. It's so obvious to me now.

Nighttime is scary, I guess....

2006-07-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

Well, this one surprised me. Last night I had a nightmare. I real live childhood-like nightmare, complete with a monster. I know what you're thinking... "Oh FFS! here he goes again with some long winded explanation of a bizarre dream that nobody is going to understand, because nobody EVER understands somebody else's dreams." Yeah that's pretty much the case except this one will be slightly shorter than the last one.

Basically I'm on the edge of a wood at night. There seems to be some sort of dwellings around, they are typically small, and a little run down. The only people that I can see are family members. There were a few others but their faces I could not make out. So there I am, I don't know what I was doing, but it matters little since an uncle of mine came running like mad out of the woods followed immediately by the monster. So I did what any self respecting family member would do. I ran away. I ran into the dwelling behind me and grabbed a shotgun. I think the monster gored that uncle, not really sure. Something happened there, but he was still alive. The monster was looking for the rest of us, but apparently didn't understand the idea of a house and that people go inside houses and they might be found inside a house, because he sort of looked around and ran back into the woods. Really quick here I'll explain what the monster looked like. He was about 8 feet tall and looked like a wolf that had gone insane, and walked upright like a man, but still had wolf legs. Very creepy although you have no sense of it, because you weren't there. At any rate, we came out of the small houses (the one I was in was basically a 5 by 5 foot room, very strange) and acted cautious. The other person that was there grabbed up my injured uncle, put him in a wheel barrow and headed into the forest after the monster. I stayed behind at first but figured I would follow him in a second... I was the one with the gun after all, but this monster seemed like he was going to be tough to gun down, even with a 12 gauge... and then I woke up.

It was three in the morning and I sat there for a minute, uncomfortable. I live alone and it was the first time in my adult life I ever felt like I wanted to hide under my sheets. After a few seconds that struck me as silly and I fell back asleep. Plus I had that thing where it feels like your eyelids are sticking shut....

Spired

2006-07-12T01:00:00.000-07:00

What happens when the thing you don't believe in, draws you in, like you are a moth to the flame (which is a horribly overused metaphor), and you can't resist, for the mere fact that you are alive and blood still pumps in your veins, like a robot at command you march into danger, into a certain world of destruction, and this is how you are programmed, and you come under fire, but you aren't a robot, you are flesh mind body soul fear anger desire and yet you push and stumble and stagger and stand again ready or not for the next blow and here it comes and to your knees you go but you are still alive and the blood pumps and muscles pull and hoist you up and the crushing blow comes and you show teeth, not in anger, but defiance, not pride, but courage, and you grip to hold on and grasp at a final straw of dignity that what you are is right... even though you will be cut down you will go with your fist raised and your eyes to the sky.

It's because you do believe in it. You may never recieve it. But you believe in it. You fight for it. You are a guardian of it. You keep it alive.

Without you, it would die.

It's a sacrifice, isn't it? I can really find no other explanation...

It's mirror mirror time.

2006-07-08T12:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up straight out of this dream early this morning. It was really creepy, but kind of sweet also. You can decide for yourself, my memory of it is fairly vivid and I wrote it down fast so I am able to prod the 'ol noodle for recall.

First, the dream is a cartoon. At least it starts that way. A Dr. Seuss cartoon to be specific. If you aren't that familiar with Dr. Seuss, I suggest you check out some of his work, this will help with visualization. And I assume you are familiar with The Simpsons, there's a touch of that as well....

The dream starts as multi colored Seussian birds fly across the sky. Everything about the dream seems peaceful enough, the birds smile and have big eyes with eyelashes. They actually look a bit like fish, in that their tails are vertical instead of flat like real birds. At some point they cross behind a tree and this tree has one branch. From my point of view the school of birds is framed in the area above the branch and to one side of the tree trunk. At this point the birds, all of them, say to me, not with their mouths, but they think this directly into my head, "It's mirror mirror time". All of their voices at once sound like some sort of discordant harmony, like too many notes too close in pitch to each other, played on a piano at the same time. The voices were rather effeminate and nonthreatening, at least in tone, but it was unsettling somehow. At the time they say this, a duplicate school of fishbirds fly in under the branch, in the opposite direction, and upside down. Both schools, while continuing to beat their flippers/wings actually hover in place now, on one side of the trunk, each respectively above and below the branch.

Now, at this point, I become aware of some kind of singing below. I can't make out the words, but the music sounds like it's some kind of parade. I look down toward to the ground. I can see where the tree and the ground meet, just behind a sidewalk. There is a house off to the side, I can't see all of it. And the street where this parade may be happening is below me, although I can't see much of it, and I don't really see any parade. At first there are people on the sidewalk, singing in tune with the parade, and on top of their singing I begin to hear the birds, also singing. The two songs are very similar yet the words are different, and I realize the birds are singing not only directly into my head with their minds, but also into the minds of all the people on the sidewalk. I can see on the people's faces the slightest hint of change, where they go from mindlessly following along in unison with the parade, to the point where the singing of the birds in their minds begins to influence them.

It seems like it's here that I realize that I can no longer see the people. They have vanished at some time, and as dreams are wont to do, it didn't use any logic for the change. They were there, then gone, and of course you silly, that how things work here in dreamland. I never saw the birds again, but I sensed their presence just off to my left. And they, with someone's hands, maybe mine as they were in front of me in the dream, started laying down napkins on the sidewalk. Their scale relative to the sidewalk was huge, I'd guess 5x5 feet square, and they were the kind you have for BBQ's, and also came in a variety of colors.

These napkins are laid out on the sidewalk and then opened up by these huge hands, as the singing continues. And as the singing of the people, and of the birds begins converge in unison, I am finally able to make out some of the words. They are saying "We don't know what we sing is hurting us" and "It's time to repair the sickness and the hurt". What I got from this, and it's impossible to convey second hand, because that's just how dreams are, is that, somehow, what the people were singing, the words they were saying and planting in their own minds, and in each other's collectively was like planting a seed and then watering and nurturing it. Of course I couldn't make out what they were singing originally, so I can't say for sure just how bad these words were. It was a sort of innocuous self perpetuating self destruction. Something that started so small and so simple, as to go unnoticed, until it's dark and evil vines had rooted themselves so deeply and completely within the people, that they didn't even notice. They didn't even wake up one day and say "Hey! what the hell is that?" No, it was as if they were zombies already, happy and content in their lives without knowing they were already enslaved, in the minds, and in their souls. An empty body carrying a parasitic, unseen host that fed directly on their souls.

I am reminded here about how Steven King often presents the evils and related characters in his books as something beloved and endearing, something a child could love, something that should care and ease your worries and pains. And it lulls you.... and also of Lovecraft, were perhaps a Shoggoth may be sucking and feasting on the happiness from your catatonic mind for a thousand years....

And so it seemed to me that these birds, in a strange way were massaging the minds of these people.

At any rate, the napkins were being laid out, and opened at each new line of the song/chant. The napkins represented the words, but were in fact blank like an ordinary napkin. As the music/chant/words progressed, they became more disturbing. Each successive napkin opened, at first revealing nothing but the napkin itself, then one by one they began to open on progressively more grotesque things, such as pus filled meat and diseased flesh.

Of course, throughout the course of the dream, at every step here, I had an emotional reaction. I could feel the birds in my mind just as the people on the ground did. It wasn't uncomfortable in that it hurt, but it was in a way like, if you were 40 years old, and had never in your life ridden a bicycle and then one day got on one and rode around all day long, you have used parts of your body, muscles and tendons and the like, that you didn't even know existed. You have become aware of more of yourself, not a good or bad thing, but you have exercised and exhausted yourself and these new parts.

I took the diseased meats to represent the injured and shunted minds and souls of the people, and with the progression of the bird's song this dis-ease in their souls was slowly being cut away, like a cancer from the body.

And as always... this is where the dream fades, I don't know the fates of these people, perhaps it is yet to be writ....

I suppose that's enough anyhow. It's lot to take in.

Just one.

2006-07-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

I've been single for about seven months now. After ending a marriage you learn a lot about yourself. I suppose you could struggle with it, but, for myself, I've learned that when someone throws a hand grenade at you, you can't really fight it off. Just give that thing a big 'ol hug and hang on for the fiery ride.

What does a hand grenade have to do with dinner you ask? Well.... nothing really. It's just a metaphor, and honestly I don't care for that one. It's not one of my better analogies for sure, but hey, it'll do in a pinch. So what happens is, once you're single again you spend a lot of time with friends, you finds ways to fill up your time, to fill up space, to fill in that chunk of you that's missing. But at some point, you're going to be hungry. You are going to be alone. And you'll go out of your head if you stay at home. These three things will invariably converge. So just give that thing a big 'ol hug and go out for dinner.

Now, at first it seems a bit scary, because, nobody is alone, not out in public.

Wait up a second there, you say, that's just a load of crap. Wait up yourself, I say. I've been dining out alone many times recently and what I've noticed is how starkly obvious the contrast is. There will be almost no one alone. Friends, lovers, mates, families, what have you... they are all there. And sure most of the time, I am out with friends, but you know, they get busy, and my life seems to have it's own schedule lately, and I've found it's better to just give in (speaking for myself, this is not advice to you) and go along for the ride. This is no carnival ride. No ride in the country. It's scary. It's horrid. It's fantastic. At times it's the best thing I've felt.

But I ramble on. The point is, there you are. They are many. You are just one.

Like on that Sex in the City episode. It's exactly like that. You get the funniest looks. Trust me though, it makes *them* more uncomfortable than it does you.

And speaking of consistant...

2006-07-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

I just realized I used almost the exact same sentence in my last two blogs. Lame.

And speaking of French cafe's...

2006-07-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

I went back to that French cafe the next morning (it was near my hotel and I wanted the pancakes, they looked delicious), and I potatoes and eggs with my breakfast, and also toast. They brought butter and jam for the toast. I think the French make excellent jam, by the way. They also brought ketchup for the eggs and potatoes. Do they even have ketchup in France? And on their breakfast? Or is it just me?