Long time no post

Well, here's my attempt to begin writing again. How about we start with a Eagles of Death Metal cd review? Sure, why not. No one listens to them and no one will find this post. Its a match made in heaven! Or maybe the place with the pointy sticks . . .

And away we go . . .

The Eagles of Death Metal get no respect. Named after a stoned comment while listening to some archly dark metal, “if we were a death metal band we’d be the Eagles of death metal,” they have never been taken seriously. Written off by meager rock minds as a joke band, EODM isn’t one, unless you think quality is a joke. Seriousness has become a pose for many in the rock world, and childhood friends Jesse (Boots Electric) Hughes and Josh (Baby Duck) Homme pose their band as serious fun. This isn’t the Darkness, or Spinal Tap. And with this final installment in the EODM triptych, it’s matured into one of the seriously finest cd’s of the year.

Homme, who is the sonic master behind this party boy duo, is the front man for Queens of the Stone Age. And he’s made every track on “Heart On” a stand alone masterpiece. Pick a song, any song, and the craftsmanship radiates like a 57 sunburst Les Paul. Guitars matter to Homme, and the way he’s placed each rhythm track, bass line, drum pattern and solo lead makes each stand alone, shimmering. It’s the kind of cd that makes it hard to stop playing because you know whatever your going to do after you turn it off is not going to be as much fun as listening to the next song.

Space won’t allow me to pontificate about the beauty of every single rip here but a few mustn’t be missed. (I Used To Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants’ falsetto chorus “I don’t want to do what I’m supposed to, I just need someone to get close to,” whipped up funk rhythm section, shuffling drums and fuzz box guitar will pull “the ladies” as Hughes likes to say, on to the dance floor. Cheap Thrills, with its Budweiser frogs on steroids bass and scratching interwoven guitars fairly signify the aforementioned song title’s conflicted hedonism. Changing gears, Now I’m a Fool, melodically winks at Steely Dan’s Only a Fool Would Say That, narrating the illusions of Hollywood love while pointing toward a new vulnerability in Hughes bad boy persona. I’ve seen him have bouncers kick d-wits out of his shows for uncivilized behavior toward his female fans, and it’s nice to see that side now appear on record. And the title track Heart On follows up by asking “once your heart’s broken, what do you do?” to which Homme and Hughes answer “I only want some pieces of you.” The sum here is much more than the pieces and the pieces are delectable.

If there is a standout to the cd it might as well be Wannabe in L.A... With a woof and a cowbell the circulating melody runs across the freeways of Hughes story and gives a brief history of the band, one that judging by the black velvet portrait on the back of Homme holding a fork may be done. But they’re not finished. Not as long as there is room on the dance floor.

Just wrong or perfect?

This is taken from a blog called "Fables of the Reconstruction." He took it from another blog. I'm not sure, but this might be one of the most disturbing light switches on record.

I hear that Mr. Obama is being elitist. What I notice is that both he and Hillary are pandering to the "Christians." Guns, church and bitterness do go together, historically speaking. I think that we hear the truth so infrequently in the mass media we forgot what the truth was. Whomever owns this light switch is either bitter, or embittering.

I'm Lazy read this

I haven't got the time to be pissed off or even mildly confused about things today. Here, read this, you'll laugh like a maniac.

http://overheardlines.blogspot.com/

More crazy dreams

Last night was a doozy. It started off with myself as a boy, say 11, and I had this crush on this girl, say 15. We lived in this little town dominated by a round-about, and I remember seeing her riding with her mom in a Mercedes. I was in a car with my mom (dream mom not really my mom) too and I saw her and we were both wearing sunglasses. We gave each other some sort of little secret sign, acknowledgement from car to car as it seemed that our moms didn’t want us together.

From this situation I was sent to some sort of new school, not the regular school where I met this girl maybe but a new school just on the outskirts of town. It was like a business park kinda, the entrance was all glass doors in a glass wall and the seats in the class were in two or three rows about ten each facing the teacher so that our backs were to the door. I went somewhere, maybe the bathroom, and this new kid comes in. He’s a black kid and while he’s kid sized and he comes in and sits in a vacant seat in the front row he’s clearly older, experienced, even jaded. He was sweating I think and he asks/ gets up to go to the bathroom and the teacher says, “the police will always go after you first” something like that. It was bigoted for her to say this and it pissed him off. So I go back into the row behind him and he disappears to the bathroom but he leaves his backpack and out of that come this reptilian/ marine serpent snake monster creatures who proceed to kill like 6 students. I remember lying on the floor while the attack took place, and I really didn’t see the violence. Just felt something creepy on my neck.

Next time I come to class I’m delivered by a really long limo and before I get out these employees of my mom jump out, armed, looking for the monsters and searching the room to make sure all is safe for me. I guess I’m sorta a golden boy. Anyway, the room is pretty large and a large part of it is given over to this kinda organic area, like giant leaves or pods shaped like Pringles that the employees begin to pull apart looking for the poison serpent disc shaped monsters. What they find is a deer-like creature, with a really bizarre head like an American Indian totem creature and they drop this little marble ball into its mouth which falls into its sea-like belly, there may have even been a small explosion at this point. From here my perspective goes all “Fantastic Journey” with me and some other co-pilot searching in our little submarine for the creatures. We find one and shoot some darts, which penetrate and explode in a creature which is flat and disc-like. It then becomes apparent that this might not be the greatest decision on our part as the creature has a mother and she’s gigantic and now maybe a bit pissed at us. Then I wake up.

The night before had a disc theme too. What I remember was that I had to pee and so I started pissing in this rather deep toilet and there was some stuff on the sides so I started to use my stream to clean off the imperfections. As I turned from one side of the bowl to the other my stream got stronger and stronger until I became like furious and I began to dissolve from the feet up. I do believe my wife was around to witness this. From this point space aliens in a gigantic disc vehicle absorbed me into their craft and soon after we came hurtling back to ear, with my wife running to get out of the way of the impending impact. The disc hit the ground on edge and then I woke up.

Some dreams bite

Last couple of nights I've had some dreams that were frankly a bit scary. Not really nightmares because I was never out of control. But dreams full of threat and searching, with a bit of violence. I'm not thinking portent. Mostly its just gotten warm around here and I think the brain is giving me a better show at night.

Two nights ago I had a dream that involve a pile-up on a road (Waring) that I drive every day. Its two lanes each way with a median and its got a bit long curve in it. The speed limit is like 35 but people drive too fast on it. In the dream some guy in a Datsun 240z painted primer grey is follow some other rice-burner of newer make around the corner and they are joshing for position. I've got the whole family in the car and just as the guy gets around me a car with a couple of rastafarians (or as we call folks in the NFL with dreads: stinkheads) pull out from the curb and this guy tags them, causing me to do a 180 and I end up ramming the trunk of my car (not one I recognize, some piece of shit sedan) into the rasta car hard, impacting at the drivers door. I'm now facing oncoming traffic around the corner and people are driving too fast and close to stop so its turning in to carnage infront of my eyes. I'm worried about the health of the rasta guys, and I'm worried about getting hit by the idiots who aren't stopping in time. One car is going way to fast and the passengers are hurled toward us, hitting a car at the curb and this one guy just sorta disintegrates, I turn my head to avoid seeing more and I can feel body parts (which is weird cause I don't think the windshield is broken) lightly spray me. I look up and there is an ear, neatly sliced off on the dash or somewhere, and for some reason there is a fish tank in the car standing on end. I pick up the ear and neatly put in gooey side down on the glass thinking: somebody is going to want this back. More cars continue to crash and with some sort of supernatural ability I pull our car closer to the curb so we can avoid being hit. Now how's that for a nice dream? My wife had just kicked me out of our bed for snoring and I went downstairs to the extra bedroom and had this dream straight away. It was the most vivid colorful dream too.

Last night I had a couple of good ones but the best was included a Saber-toothed Tiger, who sorta became attached to me, cheek to cheek as we careened down San Roque Rd. We started at my folks house, he was sleeping at the base of the driveway and I woke him up and then we sorta skated (can't tell you how) down the street. He was half-awake so first I took him right at this bus that was coming up the street to try to rouse him. Then we went down the street swerving back and forth. Eventually we made it to State street (which is perpendicular to SRR) and crossed it, whereby the road changed into some other road, lined by trees. I think that we ended up at the beach but I really can't remember anything more.

I could analyze these dreams to death but there's really nothing in them that requires a whole lot of thought from my perspective. There are no revelations. Just stuff taken from my life and mixed together along with maybe a late dinner or two. The brain goes as the stomach rumbles. I wonder what I should have for dinner tonight!

BTW spell check is down right now on the blog server. Its a blog so your not supposed to care.

Interesting women

I got caught in my car by an actually interesting story on NPR this morning. The topic was Muslim women in Britain and their new empowerment. Granted that any woman who thinks that becoming more patriarchal is the way to more political power is smoking some powerful shit, but the conundrum of being faced with Britain's stupid and racist obeisance to all things anti-terror and American has apparently led a certain group of Muslim women to both argue for sharia law and and takeover of their tired ass man-based culture. One woman, her eyes but a slit in the fabric of empowering self-denial, argued compellingly that she'd never vote in a British election unless it was to bring on the atavistic hell of dogmatic religious law by the ballot. Ah, the joyful power of getting to play the victim! Fuck the Enlightenment! I want certainly and perhaps the comfort of getting to play with other girls without the boys getting to watch. Purdah or something like that. She was pissed too that Jack Straw, the PM, had the temerity to what to talk to her face to face and not behind her veil. Its enough to make somebody weak think that laser-guided bombs are not an over-reaction. Even though they are.

Chicken or egg, why try to play nice when the "other side" is so full of shit? Well, sure, we in the West, if you believe in such a monolith, have done a hell of a job killing Muslims. They have been victimized. Except that I don't think we have actually bombed any M-folks in Manchester or Chelsea. Probably this is too small a point to parse given, yadda, yadda, prejudice, yadda, salad bowl etc. However let me go on a limb here. If you hold your religion more dear than your country, do us all the good favor of keeping that shit to yourself. Your fucking mosque, synagogue, chapel, goat pen did not build as much of this life you are now leading as you think it did. My dad, and thousands like him, white, educated, ethical, socially ignorant, scientific, objective, progressive, and now both loved and vilified built the lion's share of the world we all live in. And for that they can be cursed and thanked. If your here waiting for Armageddon, please don't feel like you need to delay departure for me. The spacecraft is hiding behind the next comet. Drink the juice and go see your leader.

As you can see, work has been a little pissy today. I'm not really that against the believers, true, deluded or simply traditional as long as they aren't too arrogant about pushing their unquestionable knowledge down my throat. I simply don't believe in unquestionable knowledge. I did my fucking homework and I got an A. Getting an A in a madrasa is like being a really good drug dealer. There's some honor in it but its still insanity. I may end up in hell but it would seem to be one of my own choosing and most assuredly won't be the one designed by either Pentecostals or Osama Bin Ladin. They may kill me. That bugs me a bit and it bugs me more that they may kill my kids or grand kids with their stupidity and need for certainty. And everyone who gets offended by someone else who has spit at their god, get over yourself. This woman over at ESPN named Jacobson got in trouble for saying, at a celebrity roast, "fuck Notre Dame." I won't say what I want out of respect for mystery. But really, do we have to play nice when the people who want respect only want to bury us?

I sound like a tired old white guy who tried for years to be understanding but found out that if you show weakness people will just climb up your ass. I will continue to take my lumps with the good humor of someone who has been treated fairly in this unfair world. But I'll hold the line at voting for Hillary. That bitch is wearing a veil. And she's really not that interesting.

A New Species

A new year demands new thinking. That and I'm just tired of the old junk. My brain, which I was beginning to think would never turn out anything interesting for my soul to contemplate, seems to have recovered. Weird shit is happening daily. My stress levels are down. I am back to fantasizing about various impossibilities, ones that have just enough reality attached to keep them from drifting into the void. My kids are cracking me up daily. In fact they should probably get the credit for getting me out of my most recent philosophical cul-de-sac. Them and Joe Strummer. In his new biographical documentary "The Future is Unwritten" Joe goes into a pretty good funk post-Clash and then after a while snaps out of it. He became something of a hippie toward the end of his life, which while not recommended, is OK if you've never been a hippie. Basically one day he woke up and said to himself, "I'm still alive." That's about all it takes if you say it to yourself in the right tone of voice.

An old employee just happened by today and it didn't surprise me that he was here given that I had thought about him a few weeks or days ago. What the fuck happened to him? Well, besides alcoholism, nothing in his previous straight life seemed to do it for him and after his folks died he just went nuts. Literally. Dealing drugs, smuggling illegals over the border, stuff like that. But he didn't seem unhappy. In fact he seemed to have embraced his demons in a way that calmed his own fears down, for the fear of the unknown can provide one with many a visit to Hades, sans the actual placement of the foot in hell. I am of a similar species of neurotic. Not so willing to delink from reality but with some aspirations. I'll report back after a lunch or two with this most interesting bloke.

I read a book, The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq. This would be the first book I've managed to finish without a gun to my head in a fairly great while. And what a book. In the end he suggests that the problem with humanity (I'm going to elide a great deal here) is that we are sorely in need of a new paradigm. Religion was supplanted by Rationalism which left us with soul killing Materialism. Which means the guy with the biggest dick wins. Back to a Hobbsian hell is hardly an upgrade. What to do? Become a new species, who no longer needs reproduction to define it. Sort of a moral eugenics I guess. Without the killing of inferiors. Just the raising of superiors. Like I said I elided a lot. Read the book if have the time, for just in the way he handles many thorny intellectual problems it is worth it. Translated from the French, of course. The irony about the book is that it attacks hippie idealism, something that sorta saved Strummer. But what is the same about both is that both get the bigger point: you have to live for something outside yourself. And that should be my mantra, because that's what I do better than the living only for moi.

In Real Life there's Beer

I've been back to emailing semi-public figures, like newspaper columnists and radio program directors. Its part of my get-back-to-work-changing-the-world-self-improvement-plan. If I can get the dumbshit at the local rock station to play something deeper in Queens of the Stone Age's catalog then their four attempts and making a pop song that idiots can understand and will buy while still maintaining the QOTSA brand quality, perhaps I can show today's young-uns and the corporate spew that manipulates them that better things exist under the surface of our shiny dumb world.

I wrote this nasty screed to a local baseball writer about one of his stupid polemics:

Tim,

If you could take a drug that would triple your salary and wasn't tested for and many of your co-workers were taking and getting all the promotions you wouldn't? What if you lost your job because you didn't take the juice? You'd rather lose your job because you are pure as the driven snow, we all know that. Add to this scenario the fact your management winked and looked the other way while this was going on. Yeah, its the selfish players, nothing more.

Why not a paragraph or two on the owners? Scared Moores will send your column back to you wrapped around a dead fish? George Mitchell's a chump. He's on the boards of the Red Sox and the Disney Company, who own ESPN who shushed Joe Morgan back in the 90's when he wanted to comment on what he saw happening on the field that reeked of steroid use. The report is bait and switch. The players are idiots, but the owners are the bigger problem.

Do your homework. And see the big picture. Its about the 6 Billion brought in this year, and the drugged up bums they use to sell their bs product to the fans. It bugs me that you still haven't learned the biggest perfidy comes from the biggest money.

As you can see, I am just a big freaking help. I am trying. It helps to know that I am paying attention to reality even in my present delirious state. We are all so valuable. God loves us all!

The perils of normalcy

I had a hell of a time getting out of bed this morning. The fog of sleep was clinging to me big time and forcing myself to get in the shower took superhuman strength. Well, maybe not super human but extra effort. Washing the funk off it occurred to me that I am freaking middle aged in a way that made the occurring more than usually palpable. Like it hit me and I felt it. Plus my damn foot hurts all the time from plantar fascias. Constant pain is a real pain, let me tell you.

What hit me is that I've been doing this freaking job of mine since I was like 30 and now I am on the north side of my forties and what the hell is this all about? I've blathered on and on about how home owning and car owning and marriage etc sometimes leave me feeling like I don't have anything to do but whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing, but its looking really a lot like I am going to have to do this gig into my 50s which while normal and all, sounds suspiciously like something I shouldn't oughta be doing. Maybe its the pain in my foot but I don't want to feel like this for the rest of my life. I don't want to feel like I have to do a series of daily behaviors that while not totally sucking, are still not the behaviors I'd like to be doing. I feel somewhat frozen. I hear words in my head like, "well if you want to go on bike ride, go!" and week after week that damn bike just sits there looking at me and mocking me with phrases like, "if you go for a ride you'll have to put air in the tires and you're ass will hurt for days afterwards." Fucking objects are making fun of me. My house does it, my cars do it, even my fish tanks. What kind of strange hell is this?

Well, surely, its one of my own making. But just because I built this jail doesn't mean I know how to escape from it. Drinking beer is like giving the keys to the trustee and making him think he could just let himself out, but he realizes that they'll just catch him so at the end of the day he hands them back to the jailer. Occasionally I will go to a rock show that brings me to the edge of the precipice of change and moral enlightenment, but its just not enough. Music used to be the pivot upon which I could leverage my soul toward something grander than fitting into the surrounding society. It still is but my lovely wife has trouble sharing my musical tastes. Anyhow I'm going to have to end this entry now because the dogs of normalcy are howling on the other line. They must be fed. For how much longer, that it a question I'd like to get movement on.

"Back to Work" or "I'm OK, You're OK"

I figure sometimes I should just start writing and see wtf happens. That's the ticket sometimes, just assume that you have to get things done and do them. Mentally the challenges I've been getting from the inward view are regressing and I'm feeling like getting back to being pissed off at our dumb world. And I really love our dumb world. I mean that.

When my beautiful wife and I have one of our struggles, its always interesting to see how it resolves after it has. Our patterns are predictable to everyone but us I suppose. Basically we find something that we both feel pretty passionate about and that we want to stick our feet into the ground for, and then we wrestle. Wrassle. Tug and pull and basically try to find a way to drag the other person to their senses. Drama ensues. Mock exits, feet stomping and the ever so popular words that wound are all a part of our stock and trade. Maybe we're bored. You'd be half right if you said so.

The culmination of these semi-yearly (on average I'd say that's about right) power struggles is the "go too far and then write a letter apologizing for it" end piece. Some of my best shit comes outta writing these far too personal to show you here missives. Basically I say with humor that I am an idiot while gently reminding my winning lass that she has a couple of Claymores strapped to her emotional bodice. Is that supposed to be bodices? Whatever. I can't help but jab at those suckers from time to time for as I have explained in earlier posts, I like explosions. I like the pure heat and then the crap flying through the air and then, after all the hilarity, a deconstruction of the damage. Call it emotional CSI. "See here Grissom, this is the place where the dagger of family self-immolation went right into the left testicle of the victim. Damn that musta stung a little." I'se a bit damaged, and I like the feel of the gnarled skin where the shrapnel went in and laid me open for a bit. New skin, who doesn't like it?

Well, not to be over confident, although that too must be part of the pattern, all is better now. The kids wisely keep the doors closed while we have it out, and we try to keep our voices low. They feel lucky their parents have stuck it out for 27 years or whatnot. We do too.

Smoke gets in yer eyes . . .

Hell decided to visit our sunny clime, picking the weekly anniversary of a previous visit as bake the city day. The national news folks visited so you know that it was serious, and worse still the President made a stop and stomped around in the ashes. I sensed some glee. I won't be flippant about the suffering because it was real and frankly if you have never been through a firestorm I wouldn't recommend it. Tragedy is centering though. We couldn't find our navels for an entire week.

One repeating trope was "to evacuate or not to evacuate, that is the question." Evacuate won big, with over a half million folks following orders and getting out of the way of the fire or out of the way of the firemen or just getting. For my buddy who nearly lost his house, the touted "reverse 911" phone system failed. A neighbor knocked on the door and they got out, and he got out just barely. His Honda was showered in embers and when he left he didn't really think that his house would survive the same treatment. Its good to have insomniacs in your neighborhood. Something to consider.

For those who live in east Jesus and have an acre or two to defend, best to stay or maybe best to have a crazy gun-toting NRA neighbor with an apocalypse fetish who has a surplus fire hose and a gas generator for his 3hp water pump. People who had such a neighbor or death wish managed to save a lot of homes. The authorities can't be everywhere and frankly, thank god for that. The violence of the passive aggressive conformists is waxing pathetic. If you can't judge reality for yourself, who are you going to trust? But hell being as unpredictable as it is and was, to heck with your homes. Run for it. Such a response to this type of global warming doesn't provoke much controversy.

The cure for solipsism

Woke up in the morning to this lovely scenario. I've been full of my own bile lately and wallowing in a morass of self-doubt and mindfucks. Tuesday night I felt a strange terror come over me and I struggled to maintain a semblance of sanity throughout the evening. (It turned out that my vertigo had returned without my knowledge or approval). At 7 Wednesday morning my family informed me that we had a problem. And the greatest relief for the hypochodriac is actual pain. So to the little fuckers who did this: I hope when they catch you I get a chance to pee on your parade. God has a pretty fucked up sense of humor, but I get the joke. Thanks for the pain, boss.

Seriously

I declared early in the year that 2007 would be a year of change. Prime example in "be careful what you ask for, you might just hit a tree in a dumptruck." As I just got back from a 4 day trip with my daughter I am feeling a mite runover. It was as it should be, insightful, fun, stressful, interesting, and exhausting in both body and mind. After 17 plus years she is a formidable person and I love her. I feel like I could have done a couple of things better but all in all, she's got some tools.

What with Ma dying this year, Sis finally getting that house she pined for, Bro still not talking to me, and Dad working at getting his life back to something besides caretaking, its not hard to miss how fucked up my head has become. I made some serious bets about 20 odd years ago and most all have paid off. But I've been faking it so long that the bicycle has begun to wobble and its looking like I might have to jam my foot in the spokes just to get off. And that, as they say, will hurt me.

I would like to get out of the fixing to die rag and back to something hopefull and seemingly new. This would be nice. I would like to be nicer and more hugable, along with less profane and prickly. And yeah, I would like to be taken more seriously, but I haven't figured out by who in the fuck I would like that serious regard to come from. Ooops, more profanity. Finding the right folks to hear my roar would seem to be the crux of the problem, if in fact there is a problem. I think the person I need to convince of my seriousness might appear in a nearby mirror.

Once my wife told me that given how I managed to talk myself into intellectual cul-de-sacs, I would never be satisfied. Thinking about that, I tried to fake satisfaction, or at least reach a level of distraction that approximated the satin sheen of satisfaction and included some quality air-conditioning. Done. Problem solved. Except that I don't take that kind of accomplishment seriously enough. This is an interesting development, at least knowing that I knocked over the tree that fell in the forest because I have read some reports about this tree. Plus I got the bill from the tree-trimmers.

One teacher who spent a lot of time telling me how great I was and then eventually told me that not only there was no god but I was not quite up to man's standards as well used to tell a parable about a man who knew how to build the magic fire. Then he taught his kids about how to do it, but as time went on, each generation had more trouble and whatnot reproducing the conditions necessary for this level of accomplishment. In the end, he said something like the great grandchild of the original didn't know how to collect the wood, build the fire, start the spark, but he knew the story. And that was enough.

Bullshit. The prof had is daughter murdered by some motherfucking psychopath and all the kings horses etc won't make that whole. The first baby died for me and the mrs. and while I don't pine away about that I wonder deeply indeed whether or not there are scars inside my belly that keep me from fully digesting my food. Still, I like to eat. And maybe my food would taste better if I didn't dilute it quite some much with strong solvents. Its surely worth thinking about. Seriously.

Friends and Time

I had one of those moments with a friend of mine the other day that left my ego in a uproar. Being not only of the "blame America first" but "blame myself first" crowd, I got an earful about my loutish behavior three nights previous. Essentially he said he didn't appreciate my drunkenness (fair I guess although no one but he complained) and that he expected to have a conversation with me and that was his only recompense given that he didn't dig the band we were seeing that much. Not his cup of tea. I apologized and basically said it was OK, even useful for him to give me a mini-lecture on the value of our friendship. Bye-bye.

After getting over the initial adrenaline shock of being told I was bad, I began to do the math. Granted, he had to chauffeur me back to his abode without me being awake, a daunting task no doubt. Probably took 90 minutes. Say 2 hrs. Of course there was the fact that I wasn't really into hearing about his issues with my usual carefulness on the way up. He had to go to his therapist, a late addition to our itinerary that pushed back our arrival time to the venue to about 20 minutes before they started. He did try to call me the day before with this knowledge but the week before when I asked him if he'd like to go, there was no awareness of this previously scheduled meeting. No big. And yet since others were involved and we had originally planned to met them for some ya ya's before showtime this was not ideal. And things need to be ideal, you no doubt believe.

I asked him what the point of therapy was given that he seems pretty OK to me. Successful business, although you wouldn't know it from his equivocating, some friends, a warm place to shit etc. But no long term relationship and I know this is a biggy. Therapy will be continued, he intoned, as long as the LTR eluded him. And then he dropped me off in the lobby of his health club so he could take a shower.

LTR's are dandy, I love mine. I'm sure that my boy will get his just as soon as he remembers that loving someone by definition requires putting their needs in front of your own, at least some of the time. Now I'm not saying I needed to get drunk but wtf, it was a damn rock concert and the sonics of the place needed a bit of beer so the volume wouldn't cause pain. Ah, no excuses. But its kinda ironic that the very thing we both need is a little bit of consideration for the other. I get this. I hate to say it but I'm not sure if he ever will.

No reason to dog pile, and I hope that he's smart enough to think about why he got pissed off at me and put it into some sort of context. Let's see, I change my whole day for him and he thinks he's doing me a favor by going in the first place. I ditch work early, I initiate the whole scenario, and bring him a composter and a car stereo to boot. Were is the love? I looked in a beer glass for something predictable I guess.

Years and years of this type of behavior, not the drinking, the making time so that we have a relationship in the first place, going to his shop, his building, and never so much a one trip to my house, these things don't matter until that moment when they do. The larger question for me, besides AA, is that I do this shit all the time. I connect, reconnect, reconnoiter, write, pester, remind and maybe this shit is getting old. Most folks who get married, have kids, get a mortgage etc do a real fine job of getting rid of their old friends. I am shitty at getting rid of old friends. If I ever went to war with you ya got a couch to sleep on, literally or metaphorically. How the fuck can it be any different?

I married better than most. I have actually spent some amount of time being introspective, and I know shit from shinola, give or take a couple of things. Some times when I am arguing with somebody about history the only way I can get their attention is to point out that I, unlike them, did my homework. I did my relationship homework and my buddy never did. I've got time and he doesn't now, because he's busy catching up on how to love. I really hopes he meets his deadline.

As you can see I'm not really ready to forgive him yet. My brother must feel something akin to this about me as he no longer talks to me. My offense was I asked him why the heck didn't he call me back when I was in town one day years and years ago and he musta felt kinda like I felt Sunday morning. Shit happens, and I said I didn't have time for his shit. So I'm off the team. I sure as hell don't plan on doing this to my friend, 40 years knowing somebody would be a terrible thing to waste but we did have a falling out once before over his "born-again" phase and my intolerance of his ignorance/arrogrance. Ah well, something to think about anyway. I'll end by quoting the band playing the soundtrack for this misunderstanding:

sadly I remain in need
all you do is talk
help yourself don't think
help yourself don't speak
help yourself don't say a thing at all
your lucky words don't bleed

What I want

The last few weeks have been filled with navel gazing solipsism, so excuse my tone if it seems too pedantically morose. My trip to Kona became my great idea became my nightmare and is becoming some other phantasmagoria of doubt and possibility. WTF. I have known for some time that I have lost sight of the person I was and now it seems really likely that I don't have a frigging clue where to look for what I was. I guess this could be a good thing: redesigning an obsolete prototype that barely ever took flight might be a good thing. So I'll speak in parables and hope that it helps me to figure out what to do next 'cause if I don't figure something out soon my world very likely will just rearrange itself and my perspective. At the point of a shotgun.

If you have a dream and your partner doesn't share in it, what do you do about that? Since most of my dreams either involve felonies or explosives, I can't blame anyone for not wanting to go down that path with me. But one thing that can be said for me, I've been consistent. Oh, maybe the only thing that I have been consistent with is inconsistency, but let's not split hairs. I have always wanted, I think I remember this, that I wanted not to want what everyone else wanted. I wanted to try to be part of the solution and not simply be a tool for the occupation. We are living in a very fucked up world and as I remember from my high school days, "to be considered normal in an insane world makes you insane." Behaviour-wise I seem normal. I don't feel dirty. But there have been some negative reports filtering in. The corporation is having some issues with my "unusual management style." Honesty and directness are fine, as long as you don't have a brain in your head. My bad.

So as I enter the end of the reproductive gulag, and the offspring make their choices as to what kind of prison they are tending toward choosing, I get to ask the question: what the fuck is next? My job is boring and banal, even thought its unique and low stress. I cannot fathom doing it for another day let alone another 10 years, but that would be the smart thing to do. I really wonder if I will live that long if I continue to punch this desultory clock. If it wasn't for my second job, which does allow me to display my actual personality and provides me with a fair amount of strokes, I would go freaking nuts. More freaking nuts.

As there is only one person who reads this blog, I apologize for this long-winded drama show of woe is me. Its actually kinda funny. I am reminded of a comment my one reader made: the answer to the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty is that its half full of urine. Something like that. I had another friend bitch me out because I wasn't being positive enough. But he just had babies and doesn't have a clue what he is in for. He will have long forgotten me by the time his divorce papers become final. Either that, or he will teach kids how to dream in black and white. (Hey, maybe not, maybe he'll just keep going to Mexico to remember how to dream, I haven't been in a while, that might be an easy fix . . .)

Maybe the whole problem boils down to me almost always having to initiate in the bedroom, but that would be a problem that I am supposed to weather with a stiff-upper lip, amongst other things. I love my wife, I love my kids, I kinda like my house (and often hate it) I like at least some of my friends, and I am not completely broke. Life is good, no? No? What I want is for someone to share my dreams with, and someone who wants what I want. I am completely insane for saying this here but she didn't pick up the phone.

Somewhere I lost the ability to say what I really want to people. I got the weird look from too many strangers and "good friends," got told not to be too negative, got asked why I wasn't negative enough about what I was supposed to be negative about, got told to count my blessings when I really wanted to burn them. My mom, god rest her soul, when I got like this used to tell me to "count my blessings" and I actually would. Through gritted teeth and a rage that still haunts me, I would try to enumerate all the "good luck" I had. Have. Had. Fuck if I know anymore. Isn't that a pretty sunset? Took the picture myself!

"Excuse me while I set myself on fire"

I quote Katha Pollitt from The Nation magazine entitling this missive. Her piece is about a particular Harvard prof who argued for going to war and now has published a half-assed self-serving mea culpa about getting it wrong. Like Pollitt, I was not against the war from the beginning simply for "ideological" reasons (like we are a dirty fucked up selfish nation full of racial bias and whining fear-mongering who like to kill people to mollify our night tremors) but was against the war because as a historian I pay attention to evidence. And there wasn't any evidence good enough to go to war on. The WMD strawman fallacy or whatever you want to call it was crap and if you had a decent ear you could tell that this shithead couldn't sing a clear note. I suggest, modestly, that assholes like Michael Ignatieff should be force to ride in a Humvee though the streets of Baghdad, naked and straped to the hood until that time they have the joy of being hit by an IED. If they survive, then they can have their dignity and gravitas back.

I picked up a Time magazine while waiting for my kids orthrodontist and read the editor's note about why they went back to New Orleans to see what's going on there two years down the road. And that fucker, Stenger or something like that, said that he was surprised to find that his previous position of having "Katrina fatigue" was replaced after actually visiting the area with a new appreciation of what is wrong with America. Strap him to a building in the Ninth Ward, light it on fire and give 100 of his closest friends the opportunity to save him by pissing on the conflagration. If he lives, make him edit a local New Orleans obituary column for a year and then tar and feather him. That might make it about even. Fuck mainstream media. And fuck the experts of the meaning of 911 who what completely failed to make a difference in the way this nation does business.

200,000 Reasons

I stayed up and watched Nightline last night and was stunned to see U.S. soldiers actually interviewed and allowed to speak their minds about their deployment. What they said should have been the lead story on the nightly news and it should be every night until the reality of the evil we have perpetuated on the people of Iraq becomes a lived reality for J.Q. Citizen. I predict that the war in Iraq will only end when Al Queda (sic) manages to get off another round and people realize that the great distraction in Iraq made that possible. We have killed, by official estimates, around 200,000 people in Iraq by "accident" or "because that's what happens in war." Every person we kill now, given that the Iraqis want us out, is a new point of hate directed at every American. It doesn't matter what our intentions are, it doesn't matter how hard we try to only kill the "bad guys;" we are completely fucked because we cannot get people to love us with violence. Rules and logic are not applicable when you use high explosives and lead as a policy device.

On a completely different level yet analogous plane I took my son's Frisbee group to their first Goaltimate tourney. And the ugly head of a twenty-six year old coach appeared with just the same indifference that his brethren's indifference to understanding why they should protest this illegal/immoral war. Our team was seeded 4th out of 5 teams and the 5th team was made up of Junior High students. We, lost to the eventual winners first, then to the kids coached by the gen-X tool. Game three was a battle with a group of high schoolers who were directly linked to the junior high team by family and location. So, as often happens with rookies, they got to a point where neither team could score and our team was down 1-0 in the series and tied 2-2 in the second game which was running "late." Tool boy starts pestering me while I am watching the game about capping it because his team needs to play the winner of our game (maybe not given the vagaries of point differential and bullshit). I am incensed by this. But I acquiesced. So we basically forfeit and let the other team go play pussboy's team. Now we start playing the junior high school kids and they are very good. They win the first game 5-4 and our team is exhausted. But I tell them that they can win if they decide they want to because I know they are bigger and stronger and eventually they will wear out the other team. I tell them this while they are winning the second game 2-1 I think, and they hear me. I can't tell you how proud of them I was as they fought back on pure heart to force a third game.

Pussfuckhead comes back during this second game, which we eventually won 5-4 on a diving catch in the endzone, and says (and I knew he was coming back because I have had to deal with his lawyer ass before) "are we going to cap this game" to which I say "no" and "I don't like you." I wanted to be a violent man right then, but alas I am not. Lucky for me the other captain was in complete agreement. Referring to our boys he says, "This is their playoff game." Exactly. Shithead's team had of course beaten the older siblings of the team we were playing before but got killed in the finals. There had been no talk of caps in the captain's meeting and for jesus fucking christ's sake its about all the damn kids, not just the elitist fucking kids. This yo-ho had the temerity to say (during the first time cap episodie) that the reason we had to follow "the schedule" was because it wouldn't be right to cut into "parent time" should the event run long. To all the helicopter parents, Reaganite hellspawn and general over-competitive fuckheads: may your children volunteer for an illegal war. Because its you fuckers that have made this great country into the cowardly shitbrain-lead nation it is today. Cowardly not because the boys killing and dying over there are cowardly, but because of all the rest of the folks who can't stay up late enough to understand that we lost the war in Iraq when we illegally invaded it. And following schedules, timelines, and whatever else is so god damn not the issue that I can only imagine disaster being the reality this stupid generation of coddled idiots needs to see the folly of their ways.

The tournament finished early BTW. This war is going way fucking overtime. I hope it doesn't cut into too much "parent time."

Missing Children

Yesterday I played some Goaltimate with my son and his friends and a nearby park. This park is frequented by a lot of folks walking their dogs and sits adjacent to an elementary school that my kids once attended. It was 4PM when we went out there and we played for two hours, taking frequent breaks for water as we had only one sub per team and it was hot as hotcakes out there. Humid too. Anyway, the remarkable thing about our presence there in my mind was that we were the only damn people there pretty much. A couple of dog walkers and a couple of teenagers went by but that was it. The playground stayed mostly empty. There were no kids less than 12 anywhere. What gives? I mean its fucking summer and I know there are some little kids in the area. And some medium sized ones too.

Sure, its probably just that mommy and daddy both work and they send their kids to daycare or grandma's. Or it might be that per capita we have not as many of these types of children around. But I really think that here in the land of constant beautiful daytime the kids spend most of their times huddled around electronic campfires of one type or another. Couple that with the rampant ubiquitous paranoia that seems to have gripped the age and voila, no kids are alone with their dreams anymore. The boogy man doesn't just come out at night anymore, he drives a panel van during the day and tries luring helpless suburbian offspring into lurid dens of genital perversion. Or worse, they might end up on a milk carton.

I fucking ran wild as a kid. I was riding my bike to school at 7 or 8, a latch key kid by the same. I communicated with my folks by landline. I never ever had any perve try to fuck with me. No broken bones. No arrests until 18. No felony convictions to this day. It just seems that these "helicopter parents" as they call them are such a bunch of pussies that we end up living in these suburbian enclaves of bad imagination, trying to "protect" our charges from monsters of our own furious and hallucinatory design. Bad shit happening is always top level news, and if any predator or rapist nails a white girl its a fucking national story. Meanwhile the places of darker hue get drive-by talleys and back page reports that are code for "gangs" which means "what the fuck do you expect to get in the ghetto anyway, those people are animals." Anyone born after say 1978 as far as I can tell has about a one in four chance of knowing a damn thing. The Reagan revolution guarenteed that these cloven hooved progeny have lived in a bubble of such a red hue that they can't see certain colors because those rods and cones have been burned out by the overdose of bad imagery that is the legacy of our media age.

The Goaltimate kids play without adult supervision most of the time. They screw around, play hard talk shit, suggest impossible anatomical mixings and question their friends masturbatory habits. They don't do drugs, or drink. They get ridiculously high grades. And they are not as integral a part of the overarching average of coersion and control that those kids stuck at home or stuck at practice often are. Freedom might happen for a few of them. Few of the safe kids have much of a chance at freedom at all.

Rocky the squirrel

A friend sent me a link to this contraption that some squirrel hater had constructed. Got to admit, its probably better than what my Border Collie does. I found one she had killed in the backyard, her first. The poor fellow was on his back, blood covering his nose, as if he'd been shot. My wife walked right by the crime scene and I called her back to see "Freckles'" kill. Right then Freckles walked by and proceeded to begin to pick up the prize, no doubt to suck the eyeballs out as they are quite delicious. I told her to drop it and she gave me the same look she gave me when I told her to leave the possum she had captured alone. "You have got to be fucking kidding me?!" she pretty clearly declared with those fierce BC eyes of hers. I can only imagine what the squirrel must of thought as he cruised into his doomed fate. He may never have seen a Border Collie before. They are cat-like dogs and Freckles has made it her life's work to kill any four-legged mammal that comes into the backyard. She even used to chase their ghosts in the trees. Anyway, here's the link. Don't send it to PETA.

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/oh,-food%21-i.ll-just-_-wahhhhhh%21%21/squirrel-catapult-is-awful-yet-we-cant-look-away-270290.php?autoplay=true

Queens for Summer

Catch a free listen of the new Queens of the Stone Age cd. It doesn't sound like anything else out there right now. This is a good thing. I don't pump bands as a matter of course because most bands that are popular now are not worth it. They are just trying to fit into some Gen Y fantasy that I can only imagine smashing with big heavy objects. QOTSA seems to not actually give a fuck what anyone thinks. That is a big step in the right direction.