Chistmas With The Family and A Mobster

I had the family over on Christmas Eve. It was fun I guess, but I find that I have so much trouble being around my famiy all at once, especially at my house. I love them all dearly, but there are some strong personalities there that tend to be a bit on the abrasive side. Here’s a great example; My brother has been trying to convince the world, especially the family, that he is some bad ass, criminal type who lives a life best depicted by the cast of the Sopranos or some type of show where guys from New Jersey wear Adidas jogging suits and leather gloves, where almost anyone will knock you off unless they are one of your "boys" and there is constantly merchandise that "fell off a truck" for sale. In my brother’s mind, people are constantly getting cut, shot, or run out of business due to the being involved in the massive amounts of criminal activity that goes on in this hotbed of gangland activity that is known as Puyallup. In his mind, he’s the loose cannon that everybody has to worry about and knows all the big players on the scene because most underworld transactions take place at "his" bar. He thinks being a bar tender is the greatest achievement ever and he is living the life that everyone dreams about. The truth is, he’s a fat guy who lives in a shitty apartment in the suburbs and works at a dive bar where he serves drinks to dedicated alcoholics who’s biggest crime is driving home drunk form the bar every night. Twice, he has had tubs of ice cream that a delivery driver brought into the bar, but of course it "fell off a truck." Naturally, our mother and father are very impressed with the perks they receive from their crime lord son and his bask in the light that shines from the ill-gotten creamy desserts. He’s never been in a fight since Junior Highschool. He drinks too much and gambles too much and he has the social skills of a 12 year abused kid. So on Christmas eve when he comes in and announces loud enough to be sure that our parents can hear, but quiet enough to where he figured it would appear unintentional. "I’m baked." And then when I didn’t respond, "I’m baked." My little brother is sitting right there (he’s 17, so he know pot exists and knows that Billy an I are both pretty dedicated stoners, but still...) and I’m sure that my folks heard him. I just don’t see the point. I’m honest with my Dad about my smoking, and I’ve never addressed it to my mother. I don’t need to feel like a rebel. I’m 27, not 17. As normal, the rest of the night, was him just trying to convince the family that he is loose cannon that should be feared and worried about, mostly by referencing his criminal lifestyle and saying how everything is stupid and how everything sucks. The only thing anyone needs to worry about him with is finding him dead of a heart attack or self inflicted gun shot.
The rest of the family wasn’t too bad. Everyone was in a good mood, I think in large part because they were all realizing that they weren’t my brother and well, that just feels good. But my dad can’t handle losing games and when we played Cranium, he was being a bit of an ass. He would throw his arms up and sigh whenever someone had to get him to guess a song by humming it. Then he would get this "you fuckin’ idiot" look on his face, while my little sister was very clearly humming every single note of "stand by me." When it was his turn to draw he wouldn’t let anyone see the picture as he was drawing it and then when he felt it was done, would uncover, with the timer half gone and sit there with that same look on his face. In the end they lost and he didn’t pout too bad, because they had a bit of a come back.
Everyone else behaved themselves alright. But I’m starting to hate having people in my house more and more. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like people are gang raping me by sitting on my couch. Mostly when more than one of them are over, but some people can make feel ass raped, just by walking in the door. I don’t get it.

The Nuance of Winter

I like winter. I like the quiet of it. Everyone is hiding inside their homes so there seems to be less traffic in the evenings and the air smells wonderful. The cold watery smell of the air mixed with the smell of leaves rotting and being burned and the smells of wood fires mix together to make the smell of winter. Last night I was up on a ladder and putting up Christmas lights on the house and smelling all those smells. I had on fingerless gloves, a stocking cap, and a scarf to keep me warm. I had to have a light with me because of the sun’s early retreat and it felt lovely and wintery.
I like winter. I kind of miss burning wood for heat though. I have plenty of reasons not to, pollution, the effort, the expense (I think it works out to be more expensive than turning on the heaters) and all the other reasons listed in a previous entry. But I do miss the notion of being in touch with my heat source a little more. I guess that’s progress.
I get a little dreamy headed during the winter, I find myself thinking of the future a lot and what I hope for with that. Lately it’s been moving. I keep finding myself thinking about moving to Spokane. I like that city, part of it anyway. I think it would be nice to live in one of the nice old craftsman houses on south hill. I would like to be within walking distance of this one big park that has a nice Japanese style garden and a rose garden and just all kinds of good stuff. I’d like a front porch and basement. That’s been my day dream lately. It’d be nice. I always think that if I go somewhere else, that suddenly I’ll sit down and race through pages and finally I would have completed a novel. Maybe I would. Spokane always feels good when I’m there.
I’m excited about Christmas. Not so much the day as the season. It’s a cozy time. It gets dark before even the earliest of dinners and there are pretty lights everywhere. It’s really kind of the last time before the Azaleas and Rhododendrons start blooming that there is anything to look at. In fall you get to watch the leaves change and make their way to the ground and then watch as they blow about on the ground. Then you get Christmas lights, but once they are gone, it’s just soggy and cold until things start blooming. Sometimes, I find myself writing history books in my head
"In the early 21st Century, homes were decorated with crude electric lights as part of a holiday seasons. This electric displays ranged from modest to lavish and where a kind of status symbol among the peoples of the era."
Every day it seems like more houses are lit. I’m looking forward to seeing them on my evening walks. I like the feeling of the cold air against me when I walk in the evening. It makes me feel human. I think that we might spend too much time in artificial climates as a people. I think exposure to cold air might keep us healthier, that’s just a hunch.
Last night as I was putting up lights, I started to recall photos of my grandfather and his brothers and sisters. Even those of my parents and their siblings. IT seems like many of the great ones that really testify to the condition of their lives and the times during which they lived where the ones where they were doing chores or doing something. Things like their tools and appliances speak to the era of the photograph and I see now how people can look at them and it could make them feel like they have lived for so long. I need to remember to get more pictures of us doing things around the house and basic living.
I like it as seasons change especially the first moment where you realize "Yes, now it’s winter (or spring, summer, or Autumn)." I know that people say that in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t have much in the way of seasons and that it’s all just varying grades of gray and rain with two weeks of summer, but these people aren’t paying attention to nuance.

My Life With Cars

As I settle into life, which I now feel like I am doing, I realize that the sad reality of that settled easiness is that I own so few cars. When I was younger I owned a lot of different cars. This was of course due to not being able to afford very good cars and my own insistence that I would work on them myself and the belief that you can not work on car that was built after 1985. I have cloister phobic hands and new cars seem too cramped and somehow so intimidating to work on due to their abundance of wires and whatever else all that clutter is. I’ve been told that I’m an idiot and that they’re no different to work on than the older cars that I thought were more easily fixed. I was thinking about it last night, and the truth is, I’ve never done much major automotive repair. I guess what I mean is that I’ve never done any engine or transmission repair. When that’s needed, I get rid of the car. I’ve swapped some engines on cars at this hot rod shop that I used to hang out at, but that was different and I always had expert supervision hovering nearby to tell me that I was an moron.
I love my truck right now. I’ll get more into that later, but I miss the quirks and uniqueness of all my other cars. I miss the way some of them stood out and the way some of them blended in to everyone but me. I recall them all just as fondly as old friends.

The Silver Mullet: The Silver Mullet was my first car. It was a 1981 Plymouth Horizon, a little two door hatchback. It was grayish silver, and powered by 100% rock ‘n roll. What a car. Easily my favorite car ever. It wasn’t fast, but I drove it like it was. My dad bought it for me for $90 at an auction at the tow yard that he worked at. He put a few hundred dollars in parts into it and did the labor himself to give me a car that if I totaled it the way most new drivers do, he wouldn’t be out much. I had to pay for the insurance and gas myself, so it shuttled me to my second job as dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. Oh the Mullet. I had a pair of cheap handcuffs hanging from the review mirror and a quiet riot patch stuck to the cracked maroon dash. I swear that the car gained about 5 horse power the day I put the patch up. A buddy of mine who’s always been a tinkerer put a cheap tape deck in it for me. The really nice part about the instillation was that he used ridiculously thick green wires that he for some reason left at about 3 feet long. This gave my the unique ability to set the tape deck in the passenger seat for easy operation. I held it place with a note book note book that eventually took the form of a large and hideous flower due to it’s pages becoming shredded from being shoved back into place so often. The amazing thing about that car was that I could take corners pretty fast in it and it would slide around the corner in a very race carish looking drift. Prior to my owning it, it had power steering, but I’m guessing the pump broke or something because it was never hooked up as long as I owned it. The steering was very stiff, which added to the race car feeling, but left me sore at night the first few weeks I was driving it.
I scared the shit out of people when I drove that car. I knew, or at least thought I knew how the car handled so well that I wasn’t afraid to push the limits of safety. The girls that were willing to ride with me, squealed and giggled when I took corners fast or did a hilariously pathetic burnout which made me feel like a comedian and a super sexy test pilot all at the same time.
Towards the end of my owning it, The Silver Mullet began blowing the blackest smoke I’ve ever seen come out of a car from it’s tail pipe. It wasn’t only the blackness of smoke which was amazing, but the volume of it. At night, it would actually make the headlights of cars behind me almost invisible. The even greater part about it was that I could usually make it do it whenever I wanted by putting it in second and letting off the throttle for a moment then putting it back on to just the right spot.
But the mullet started to develop some quirks with the shifter linkage that I thought I couldn’t look past, but in retrospect should have. And I sold it to a guy named "Chewie"that was a friend of a friend’s father (Honest Rocko). I even let him keep the handcuffs. I saw him at a party and he told me that the car had been in a (not so) high speed chase with the police when his old lady took it and ran away on a crank induced, week long road trip of mayhem. After that it was then sold to some other guy. I like to think that it’s still out there somewhere rasing hell and blowing black smoke and being the symbol of anarchy that it will forever be to me.
The Cut-Dog: The Cut-Dog was a 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlas. Man that was a lush ride. I bought from some guy named George that my dad worked with. I liked it cause it was big and had pimpishly soft interior. It also had that great power steering that big cars of that era had. I could turn the wheel with two fingers. I bought it for $750. Me and The Cut Dog were with each other but a short while due to the thrown rod, but that car will hold a fond place in my heart because it was first car I ever hit a 100 mph in and I just felt so damned cool driving it all slow like a gangsta. It was blue through and through and even found some sweet diamond tuck blue pillows that I kept in the back seat. The cut dog ruled, but it was apparently not meant be, but I’ll always love him.

The Dart: I think the Dart was briefly named Norm, but it never really stuck. I had almost bought the dart right before I bought The Cut Dog from my friends neighbor, but she couldn’t find the title and it was never transferred into her name and my dad told me not to. But then the title was located and my friend Chris bought it as a back up car. After The Cut-Dog threw a rod, Chris agreed to sell it to me for $100 with the condition that once I got a new car, I sold it back to him for the same. The Dart was a 1974 Dodge Dart. It was brown with tan interior. The slant 6 that powered that thing ran wonderfully and passed emissions without a problem. It was a nice car. It had some quirks though. When it was cold, it didn’t like to start unless I took off this one vacuum hose (I think it was a vacuum hose) off of this one part of the air cleaner assembly, but then it didn’t want to run with that off. So I would have to pop the hood, unhook it, jump in the car and start it, jump out hook it back up and then roll. This was particularly fun when it died at intersections.
The first nail in the coffin of the Dart was an accident with some retard that couldn’t see because the sun was in his eyes, so he did what any normal person would do, he took a left in front of me. So I got $450 for the car from the insurance company, but then brakes gave out a while later, and I was lazy so I just got rid of it. Chris didn’t want it back. The Dart was cool and I had it while I was hanging out at a hot rod shop so it gave me some credibility. Muscle cars were considered cool enough around there, but they were just cars to be driven while you were building or between real hot rods. I also like how brown it was. I felt like I was sitting inside a big turd with wheels.

Barney: After the Dart was my second favorite car I’ve owned, Barney. Barney was a 1969 Buick LeSabre. It was big. It had a big engine and it was Raspberry Mettalic. A less careful observer would think that it was actually purple, but it was Raspberry Metallic. Though it’s purplish quality accounts for it’s name. The car had been owned by one family since it was new until just before me where it was sold to the same family that had introduced me to "Chewie." The patriarch of this family was Honest Rocko. Rocko was about 7 feet tall or more and not small in the girth. He was a Philadelphian born biker with a pony tail down to the middle of his back. He was always buying and selling cars and was scary as hell, so when he nick named me "shit lips", I didn’t argue. I was shit lips. Dealing with Rocko was right out of a movie. He would buy low and sell high, but he always was a good guy and I loved seeing him in public because he was the kind of guy that you were proud to walk up to and shake his hand, even if he did call you shit lips. Rocko was the one who told me that Barney was not purple. He knew because his buddy’s daughter had picked out the color from Mayco; Raspberry Metallic. Also, when he had some carpet installers in his house, one of them commented on the purple car and before Rocko could threaten to kill him if he called it purple again, the other carpet installer said "That’s raspberry metallic. When I worked at Mayco, I sprayed hundred of car that color." This made Rocko happy. I’m imagining that it was the Rocko family that named the car Barney. They had a particular skill for words and names.
So I had Barny for a about a year or so. The coolest thing about the car is that nobody ever wondered if they saw you driving, they knew if they did. I didn’t drink during much of the time that I owned Barney, but still hung out with a lot of people that did, so I was often the designated driver, and Barney came in handy for hauling about a dozen drunks around. Barny and I had lots of mis adventures due to no working gas gauge and let me tell you, that’s a big car to push around.
My favorite story about Barney though, is one time when I got pulled over. It was late and I don’t remember what I was doing, but I know that it was nothing bad. Anyhow, I got pulled over and the cop shined his light in my car. I had a flash light sitting on the seat of my car because I didn’t have a dome light.
"What’s the flash light for?" He asked.
"Seeing stuff in the dark." I said. I really didn’t mean to be a smart ass, but it came across that way.
"The reason I pulled you over, was that you match the description of a prowling vehicle." I just laughed.
"Really?"
"Well I thought it was brown."
"No sir," I informed him. "It’s raspberry metallic."
Barney had a bunch of problems, though none terminal, when I sent him to the scrap yard. I was given a ton of shit from Rocko for not offering them the opportunity to buy Barney back and the guy who owned it before Rocko told me that I "broke (his) heart (by scrapping it)." That made me feel kind of bad.

Phillip: Phillip was a 1963 Valiant 4-Door. It was named by a friend at the time who also showed me how to lower the front end with the torsion bars. We didn’t lower it a ton, just enough to give it a little rake. It was red that had somehow managed to avoid fading much. I think I bought it from my Dad after he bought it from an auction. Another slant six car. It ran okay, but it was always really underpowered and the throttle had about an inch and half of movement on it. Had I bothered to look into this like Rocko did when I sold the car to him, I would have found that a simple adjustment on the throttle linkage would have fixed this. I liked Phillip a lot even though I ended up doing quite a bit of work on it. One day, when changing the a tire, I snapped off about four of the lugs on the back tire, before my dad came out and told me what an idiot I was and told me that the big "L" on the end of the lug indicated it was a reverse thread lug, so you had to turn "righty loosey" So I had to replace all of those which was a learning experience during which the car came within about 2 inches of falling on me. Good times. At some point, I had to replace the master cylinder and broke a brake line in the process. So I got to bend my own break line. That was fun. I managed to break the return spring the master cylinder by doing some thing stupid which required me to rig a bungie cord between the steering column and brake peddle. Somewhere else in there I messed something else up so every time I pushed the brake peddle I was met by a shower of sparks. I liked that car a lot. Eventually, like all the other cars, I got sick of messing with it and sold it to Rocko for one of his sons.
Phillip was cool, he was low and old and not an old lady car, but not a real meat head car. The dash was all metal and painted red. On the dash I had a sticker that I got from a sticker machine that read "I make boys cry." I thought it was really funny. Everyone liked Phillip even though the interior was just a plaid flannel blanket tucked into the seat and you got honked at when driving up hills because he was a little on the slow side. I wish I still had Phillip.

The Bronco: I tried to name the Bronco at one point, but it was "The Bronco" as nothing else ever fit. It wasn’t really a Bronco, it was a 1989 Bronco II. It was my first attempt at what I considered a "respectable car." It had a newness to it that none of my other cars had even it was well over 10 years old when I bought it, but laquer wasn’t faded much, it didn’t have old car interior and it just looked like a car that you never had to be embarrassed about. I bought from some guy at my work, who bought from some chick’s parents. It had some problems, but to be honest, I never really bonded with the car, even though I owned it for a couple of years. It didn’t have much character and I never wanted to work on it when stuff broke. I took it on a lot of fishing trips, and the four wheel drive came in handy every now and then, but it the fact that I thought it was "respectable" in the end was why I hated it.
One time, I got a call from my buddies who I was leaving with on a road trip the next day, but one of the cars had not yet been built all the way. I think it was a ‘36 ford or something and we had spent the weekend getting it ready, but some of the finishing touches were still being put on it. I had to work before we left the next day and I had to go home early from the shop and then they started calling telling me to come back. I still lived with my folks and they were calling real late, so I got pissed and told them to "fuck off" and hung up. So I get up in the morning and I’m running late for work there is some note on my car. It was a poem from my buddy that read something about me getting pissed and Jack being nimble and quick and then standing under the horses rear end. I just threw it to the side and went to back up and my car wouldn’t move. I put it back in reverse, and tried again, but it still wouldn’t move. I got out and walked around the car and didn’t see anything. Eventually, I discovered that I they had jacked up my car, put jack stands under it just high enough to keep the wheels off the ground, but just about a quarter inch high, so I didn’t notice when walking around it. Pretty funny.
It was my first car with a CD player, which was cool, but that broke too. At some point, it was suffering from starter problems and I just got pissed at it and went out and brought my current car.

Taco: Taco is a 2005 Toyota Tacoma. First brand new car in anyone in my family has owned. To say I love Taco is an understatement. I adore him. He has no options. Manual locks and windows. Standard cab. So it’s a cozy car. I left the sticker that was on it at the dealership that read "2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year" for almost a year. Once when asked about why I didn’t take it off, I answered "You don’t buy the 2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year to keep it a secret." I still feel the same. It’s a 4 cylinder engine. It gets great gas milage and we’re pals. Sometimes at night, I drive around and listen to music and smoke a little dope on all the back roads that remind me of being a kid and I’m comfortable in Taco. Taco has dignity, he is a utilitarian vehicle, not a lot of fluff, but he’s still a nice car. He’s dirty on the inside, but cleans up very nice. I’ll drive him until’s he’s dead.

Phone Sex With Grandma

Phone rings. It's picked up after 5 rings.
"Hello." It's my grandmother.
"Hi Grandma." I said. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting here in my birthday suit right now." I was stunned. Was my grandmother misinterpting my friendly call as an attempt at phone sex?
"Thanks for that, Grandma." I say after a long pause.
"I'm just about to get into the shower." She sounded throaty, like a crazy woman trying to be sexy.
"Are you going to be there at noon?" I ask.
"Why, I imagine so." She says, still sounding like the worst phone sex operator ever.
"Okay, I'm going to come up to play cards on my lunch hour if that's okay."
"That will be fine. I better go take that shower, I'll see you in a couple hours."
I need to go pray.

Portland The Demon

The end of summer when I was fourteen still smell like freedom. The fact that school was very near didn’t sour the day as I walked passed the car dealership with best friend Luke, and a pretty young lady who neither of us had a pure thought about. It was a warm day and Luke and I were silently fighting for the position next to the girl that allowed us the best vantage from which to look down the front of her shirt as we walked.
"You guys smoke weed?" The voice sounded like it belonged to the loveable dolt on any number of sitcom.
"Yeah." I answered. Truthfully, I had, but I didn’t on a regular basis. But that day I was happy to show off for the young lady who was there. I turned around to see two guys that I would have placed in there late teens or early twenties. The one who was speaking was tall, had a shaved head, was wearing a striped shirt and had a deformed ear. The other guy was a nondescript grubby kind of guy.
"Come on then." I received a concerned look from the girl, which only made me feel like I was being much more dangerous. So I followed. My buddy whispered something to me about maybe I shouldn’t, but I felt like being brave. So we all followed to a row of some of the grubbiest places that sat behind the Dairy Queen that even though I had lived in that town all my life I had managed to blind myself to their existence that they were so run down and gross looking. But then I was alone in a room with these two guys that I didn’t know, while my buddy was sitting on the front porch with the girl that I was trying to impress. But this was one of the few moments in my life where I was able let my anxiety be overpowered by my sense of adventure. So I sat there on a faded bedspread on the corner of a bed that I was sure prostitutes had earned their living on.
The bald guy with the deformed ear was named Josh. He placed a bud on a Coors Light tall can that had been made into a pipe and handed it to me.
"That’s just my thing." He seemed to begin talking in the middle of a sentence. "I just want to get everybody in the world to try weed, just once." He said paused to take the pipe back from me and hand it over to the grubby guy who took a big hit and exhaled through his rotten front teeth. "I’m like that song," Josh continued. "More human than human, that’s me." I hated that song then, it wasn’t quite obscure enough for me and I was suffering from the delusion that the only good music was obscure music. Josh trailed off as we passed the pipe around a bit more. I realized that my friends were outside still and I thanked them both for the dope and apologized for taking off so quickly. They said not to worry and to "pass it on."
Luke, the girl, and I went out to coffee at some Italian restaurant, where a couple of years later I would be a dishwasher. Where I recall acting a lot more stoned that I was, but I got a couple of approving looks from our breasted companion, so I kept it up.
I don’t remember that afternoon, I’m assuming it ended with us finding some other people and we went to wherever or maybe my mom came and picked me up.
A while later, Josh was back. He was at the park that my friends and I sat around at and smoked a lot of cigarettes and talked a lot about nothing, but those were important and brooding times. We had a revolution to plan. Josh showed up and started talking to him. He was working at the fair selling wax likenesses of people’s hands. After the fair, Josh never left, but he quickly was renamed "Portland" one day he "got real high on meth and rode my bike all the way to Portland." That was a hell of a haul, we were 30 miles south of Seattle. He was there at the park for the next couple of years. He was always telling people how he was from hell and he was sent back to earth for battling with Satan. It was that same fight with Satan, where he broke one of his horns, hence his deformed ear.
Portland was a joke to most of us. The crazy guy. Those who smoked weed got high with him, and it always seemed like the folks who were homeless and the most confused about life ended up being pals with him for a couple of weeks until things started looking up. But the was there. Once he had a puppy and when my mother came to pick me up, she asked who’s puppy it was. Portland looked my mother in the face and said in his television surfer dude voice
"He’s a dragon from hell."
Another time, I was at taco bell with my girlfriend and buddy and he was there and kept staring at my girlfriend’s tits.
"Get off my burger." I said to him. I thought it was really funny to call her "my burger." I think I got it from a Cosby show re-run.
"Wrong place, bud. Tacos." My friend laughed hysterically, while I scrambled to think of a witty retort. I didn’t need to, Portland engrossed in rolling up a paper napkin with some red sauce in a burrito wrapper. He then walked up to the counter and demanded a new burrito because they forgot to put beans in his. He was asked to leave.
Looking back, I guess I really liked the guy in a way. He was a familiar and unique fixture in my youth and I always like telling people who knew him that I met him back when he was "normal." I remember once, he was sad just sitting on a park bench. Staring off into space. I shot the shit with him a little bit, I asked him about the other guy that I had first met him with. He said that he hadn’t heard from him in a while that he should try to get a hold of him. I remember how much he just radiated sadness that day. I could even feel it when I walked away from him and went and sat on the other side of the park.
Portland was always just there for the next few years, a local oddity. He got more and more strange and maybe more dangerous as time went on. He was said to have chased a little girl with a sword. The rumor was that he said "I want to see your guts." He apparently spent some time in jail for that one. Eventually, Portland hung himself from a highway overpass. I’ve never believed that he thought he was going to die. I’m sure he just thought he didn’t need air or a neck to survive or that maybe he was just going back to hell to finish his battle with Satan. My favorite joke for a while was "Has anyone seen Portland hanging around." I’m a little ashamed of that now.

Copper Tunnel

The receptionist and I had exchanged a couple of emails about why she needed part of Friday off. She sent me the following in all seriousness and when I buzzed her to ask her if she was joking she ended up hanging up the phone in shame.

that's right I did work my fingers to the bone, that is why I feel like I have copper tunnel now

A Mere Creation's Meditation Regarding Time

Time, not the clock or the calender or the any of the other inventions of man that are suppose to measure the inertia of the universe, but time as a universal factor or power consumes my thoughts either as an almost undetectable veil dimly coloring the light that illuminates my every thought and perception or as a conscious thought that I approach as a riddle and never a river. When I look at my reflection I usually see myself aging and falling to a pile of dust before the mirror, but at my most innocent of moments and those when I feel the most put upon by the world, I see my maturity melt away leaving the child that I once was; a child, consumed by things that thoughts cannot combat. Time is my advisory. It seems as though even God is resigned to letting time have its way, but then a mortal should not try to look through God’s glasses. When one pursues perfection in everything or anything, time is a cruel mistress. It is necessary to submit oneself to her will in order to be a student of anything because if we attained knowledge with a mere desire, it would come with no wisdom, and yet we are always running from her trying to negotiate a last attempt to achieve our ultimate goal. In the end though, she cuts us down and leave us unfulfilled and with perfection not achieved. So why as finite beings, do we pursue perfection in a universe that doesn’t allow for it?
Every autumn, I love to watch as the leaves try beg for God’s Mercy in displays of unnecessary beauty and every time I take it in, I find myself thinking we’re approaching some apex of grandeur. Though I’ve never believed that I was witnessing that moment of rapturous beauty. I try to tell myself that every moment is exactly as it should be because that’s all it can ever be, but I’ve not been able to believe that in soul.
This all ties into the my quest for some universal truth that I believe God has hidden for me to find like an Easter Egg, but more and more I suspect that the truth I seek is the realization that my hands cannot affect the flow of time and perfection is not obtainable by mere creations.

Another Work Moment

I thought for a minute that perhaps someone had sent me a cross dressing blues brother singing telegram. A large women with almond shaped shades was standing at my door, her head slightly hung. But when she opened her mouth, she did not break into a song about living the wild life or how much she loved "to rock." But rather, these words"I'm going home. I have a migraine." That is not Rock `n Roll at all; just a fat chick with a fake disorder. And here I thought my day was going to get good.

Monochromatic Days and Leftover Erections

Man, it’s fuckin’ gray today. The world, as seen through the only window I can see from my tomb of an office, is just shades of gray piled up on one another. It physically hurts me to be at work today. So I’m sitting here bummed that my weekend is over and what makes it really weird is that I got a rager of a hard on due to some herbal, big dick pill that I took on Friday. They work good. I also, want to take a shit, but everyone is standing in the route to the bathroom and I know that if I walk way they’ll notice, cause these slacks are great for broadcasting when you have a boner. This is my fuckin’ life. I’m being held hostage by my own erection.
I went to the doctor on Friday (see last entry). I’m not dieing. I’m just crazy. She wanted to medicate me for anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. I declined the meds. She said that I’ll probably get worse. At least my life will be interesting, right? My hearts fine. She gave me a bunch of stuff that I need to start doing if I don’t want to die by the time I’m 40. Typical stuff, walking, eating veggies, less carbs, less meat. So this is the part where I try to keep it going for longer than a week. We’ll see what I can do.
I guess that is it.

Bong Hit and Heart Attacks - A tale of Neurosis

Last night was a lovely demonstration of what my life is becoming. My brother called me and asked if I wanted to come down and watch the new episode of South Park. My lady was asleep and I was going to either read or get real stoned and call people, so I figured that leaving the house might be good for me. Oh-contraire-mofraire (sp?). My brother’s apartment is one of the few places that I enjoy leaving my house to go to. It feels a bit like the club houses we built as kids, but now it has my most favorite bong in the world to smoke out of. I hate the way the thing looks, but I love the way it hits. Anyhow, I wake my lady up and tell her that I am leaving. She grumbles something indicating that she heard me and after grabbing a few nugs from the stash I leave through the garage door as to not wake her further. I’m a bit on the stoned side, when I leave and it’s dark and cool and everything that a autumn night should be so I’m cruising a long at my usual 20 miles per hour and listening to Nirvana Unplugged and really enjoying my buzz. Then everything starts to go wrong. As soon as I pull onto the first major street, a cop gets behind me, but I keep my cool as I know that I’m not too stoned to drive and that I could totally communicate with a cop if I were to get pulled over. I take stupid back roads everywhere I drive because I think I don’t like looking at headlights and illuminated strip malls, so I turn down one of them and the cop follows me. He turns out soon enough, but gets replaced by another cop. So that starts to get to me. Soon enough, every third car is either a cop or looks suspiciously like an unmarked police car. But I keep my cool until I’m 2/3 of the way to brother’s place. Then I realize that I don’t remember closing my garage door. I hate the thought of my garage door being opened and people going in and chopping up my lady so I turned around. I wish this was the first time that I have ever done this, but it isn’t, if I don’t watch the garage close and say to myself something like It’s Wednesday Night, I’m going to my Brother’s, The Garage is closed. I’m doomed to coming home to check on it. I don’t have a cell phone, so I couldn’t just call and I didn’t want to wake up the lady anyhow, so I just turned around. I’ve called my family and asked them to drive by and turned around and even left work during the middle of the day due to that fuckin’ door that I can’t even count. So what’s one more. Besides South Park wasn’t on for over an hour. So I drive home and naturally the garage is closed. I’ve never left it open in my entire life. Not once. I’ve considered putting up a webcam in there and having a live feed to some website so that I can check on it from anywhere with a computer, but that sounded like a lot of trouble, so I just started parking outside.
So I get to my brother’s house and I open a diet wild cherry Pepsi (which is my all time favorite soda, but I deprive myself of it so that it stays that way) and load a nice size bowl into my bro’s bong and I take it one hit, knowing that I’m taking a enormous hit and trying to be cool and show off. My brother even obliged and commented that if were to take a hit that big he would be coughing and puking. I loaded him a bowl and then finished it off after his hit. Then I sat back to enjoy my high. Things went down hill quickly.
Ever since I heard about that marathon runner who died in a marathon in Chicago or wherever, I’ve been having chest pain. I’m only 27. Sure I’m fat and my cholestrol is creeping up, but I’m not on schedule for my first heart attack for a couple of more years yet. And while I was sitting in the chair laughing with my brother about something random and not that funny, I started to realize that I might be a little bit on the way too high side because he started... changing. I don’t know if there is any way to describe it. Every once in a while, when I’ve smoked too much, people’s faces look like there’s but it’s like I’m seeing them for the first time and all their action seem really fake and stuff. I don’t know how else to explain it. Then my chest started hurting. I went from 0 panic to about 300 in 2 seconds. I started pacing around my brother’s apartment. Then my left arm started feeling funny. I knew I was just having a panic attack, but what if I wasn’t? My brother asked me what was wrong and I told him that I was panicking, and he wanted to know about what and I told him that I thought I was having a heart attack. He said something indicating concern, but knowing that I was just being a head case. By this time I’m in a cold sweat, my left arm is dead and it feels like an unearthly claw is gripping over my heart up into my shoulder. I need fresh air, so we walk downstairs and I pace around why my brother pisses in his shared front lawn. I feel better when I’m outside, but I realize that I can’t stay. We haven’t even watched the re-run of South Park yet, but I headed home. I shouldn’t have been driving, but I had to get home. I remember that I had some Aspirin in the car (Baer because, I’ve never seen a generic Aspirin’s commercial tell me that it saved lives) from an earlier panic attack/heart attack from earlier in the week. I almost drove into a tree while I frantically downed two or three of those. I started hyperventilating and realized that I had to get to the hospital or I was going to die. Luckily, it was a few blocks away and on the way home. So being convinced that i was going to die, I found a convenient parking spot and walked to the hospital’s which I found to be closed. I started to realize that I had now been having my "heart attack" for like 30 min, so I was probably not really having one. So rather than walk to the correct door of the hospital I decided that I had better go home, as my brother was going to be expecting a call letting him know that I made it home alive. So I drove home, almost running over a couple of deer and then I woke up my lady and asked her to calm me down. I was clamming, my pulse was up, I was flushed, my left arm was dead and I felt the gripping on my heart, so I probably looked like I was having a heart attack, but luckily my lady knows me well enough and just sat while I took a bath and then we went to bed and she cuddled the hell out of me. I eventually made it to sleep, but not soundly. I’ve gotta stop smoking so much dope and start running or something. This is bullshit is my life.

Asshole Cookies

The holidays are coming. I’m not going bag on them and say I hate Christmas and blah, blah, blah. I try to not to think about the how many holidays are now just one more demonstration of sad excess worship. I recall once being on a public bus and getting a very loud, very Tiny Tim(the fictional cripple not the dead guy with the ukelele)-esque speech about how Christmas was great because people feel good at Christmas. The rest of the bus seemed pretty irritated to me, though the teller was convinced that it made our fellows patrons of mass transit to look deep in their hearts and find the spark of Christmas spirit that hid therein, but then for as long as I’ve known him, he’s seen the world through after-school-special colored glasses. And of all the reasons that I dread the coming of Christmas, it's because of my Tiny Timish friend that I dread it the most. I was pals with this guy for a long time and then it got old and I parted ways rather abbruptly. I’ll be honest, the better friends I am with someone, the less I want to see them after I’m done participating in an active friendship. It’s not nice, I know. But the thing of it is, that I when I’ve been good friends with someone, I tend to stay that way unless I quit liking them and then I stick around for much too long after I begin to mildly dislike them because I don’t want it to be awkward, and then the mild dislike increases and then... well something usually happens and pisses me off and then I’m done. I don’t bother explaining to them why they are fucks or anything, I just quit coming around and quit returning calls. I’m a jerk, but what do I care? Anyway, it’s been two years since I exodused myself from Tiny Tim, but he and his family persist. I keep getting invites to things that, I don’t attend. But worst of all, is the Christmas Stop By. They bring me cookies, which is nice and all, but you know... I just wish they would keep their Christmas spirit to themselves because It’s fuckin’ awkward. The whole family, Tiny Tim, included comes over and stands in my house, we make small talk like we’re still friends, but the whole time I’m stoned off my ass and my house reeks like dope and there they are with there judging eyes and all I want to do is run around in circles screaming "WE’RE NOT FRIENDS ANYMORE! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" I know stupid, right? I just hate it when people are in my house. What’s more, is there anything ruder than stopping by without calling? So basically, I’ll spend the two weeks before Christmas with the living room lights off and not answering the door. Don’t think I’m joking, I’ll really do it. It's not even Halloween yet, why am I worrying about this shit?

A microsm of my work life

This was an inner office email sent to me this morning by one of our more complaint-prone employees. A medical release is needed for a doctor's office to send us copies of their records.

Question. What is the policy when medical records requests are being mailed and there is no medical release in the binder downstairs? Is it to put a sticky on the records request and write "Need Medical Release" and stick it in my mailbox or for the person mailing things to pull a medical release from the file and get a copy into the binder downstairs?

I just wish I could express how much I hate my job.

Poor me

Yesterday was odd and it was one of those days that demonstrated to me how easily I let my moods get turned around. It started off very quiet and I was doing a lot of thinking (see yesterday’s blog). My work day kind of sucked. I got yelled out by my boss about the something irrelevant, but I think he was in a mood. I then had to chew out one of the folks I supervise and it sucked because she is one of my favorites and she is just now recovering from me firing her daughter. I doubt I’ll be receiving any of her tasty goods anytime soon. Then I got chewed out by an one of our attorneys we work for. Then I got chewed out by a client. I basically spent the whole day getting hollered at. I hate feeling like a slave. So that all sucked, but I’ve been trying not to let the man keep me down and I’ve been trying to leave my work bullshit at work and not think about it at home. So too cheer myself up, I did what I always do, I went and bought something moderately expensive that I’ve been wanting for a few days. Just something for gardening, but when that’s what you’re into it makes you happy, right? So it didn’t work. The store was closed and couldn’t return it and all I wanted to do was play with it, but I couldn’t. That’s when things began to go down hill and I’m not even sure why.
My lady bought this really nice mail box (yes, that’s where we are in life, we have a nice mail box) because we got a nasty note from our mailman about ours and we need a locking one anyway. I checked and it should fit without having to cut any boards or anything, Yay something simple! But the drill that I had charged the night before, just for this very task, was dead so I think the battery is shot.
So I did what anyone does. I tried cleaning, but my lady had just cleaned the house and there really wasn’t too much to do. So i watered the some grass seed that I’m trying to get growing in some bare patches and a couple of plants. Then I saw that the Clematis that we had just planted was dead-dead-dead. FUCK!!!
All the while, I would normally be baked or at least a little on the stoned side, but alas, we are low on dope and I want dope for this weekend. So I didn’t smoke. This seriously fucked with my Zen. It kind of made realize how dependant I am on that to relax. So I didn’t relax. Oh and did I mention it was fucking hot.
So I’m crawling up the walls and pouting like a mother fucker. My lady just kind of ignored it and let me walk around throwing my tantrum so at least we didn’t get into an argument. That was nice. But as I always do when I am feeling victimized by the world, I suspected that she was secretly mad at me. I asked her and she said she wasn’t. Of course this morning I realized that she was just letting me work through my neurosis.
TV was really pissing me off. It was all shows about rich people or murders and the nations obcession with the rich and criminal are sore spots for me this week.
I just figured, that I’d call it a night and hit the sack early. My lady was back there napping as it was the only room that was air conditioned. So Laid down next to her, but it was too damned hot to cuddle and I really felt like a cuddle, but it wasn’t happening. Then the dog sleeping on the floor next to me started farting terrible (cause as I discovered yesterday, she’s eating cat shit) and she ran me out of the room. So I slept in the back room for a little bit and then I got up and went back to the bed room cause I heard the dog leave and then I went back to the room. Tried to sleep for a while, but my bed was very uncomfortable and I could tell that my tossing was keeping up my lady. I finally went out to the couch and had to sleep out there.
So it was a lousy night, but I feel like I expelled a bunch of negative energy that had been building up in me and I feel good today.
I keep coming back to this thing I heard a long time ago that men have a hormonal cycle identical to a woman’s just over a longer time line. I wonder if I was on my period yesterday, or more likely I was just throwing a tantrum.
This is the lamest thing I’ve ever posted on here.

Searching for Shangri-la

It kind of hit hard. My buddy and I were in the back room smoking a bowl and he asked me if I still wrote. I think what he actually asked was "Do you still make words?" I told him that I hadn’t recently and that I should. He looked me dead in the eye and said "You should. It will be too late soon." He was right. I had been feeling a bit like a super suburbanite lately. I’ll be honest; It feels kind of good. I’ve cast aside hopes of a political revolution. I’ve tried to blend in with the neighbors a bit more. Most of all, I’ve quit planning my escape from my eight hours a day behind the desk. I hadn’t sat down and decide that I loved being a white collar wage slave, but I when Smith said about it almost being too late, I realized he was right. If I wanted to get stuck in the life less radical, I should just keep doing whatever it was that I was doing, but otherwise, it was time to change something. Maybe I just needed a change mind set. Maybe I needed to do something criminal. Maybe I need to go on an adventure. I didn’t know. I suppose I still don’t. But Smith was right. Time was running out. If I wanted to become the next Earnest Hemingway or to at least have a journal worth reading when I’m dead, I would need to do something.
The next day, with the immediate extensional angst not so burning in the forefront of my mind, I headed out to buy a copy of High Times. I went down to a head shop that opened down town that has a lot of really great glass pieces. The shop had just opened a few weeks prior, but I had been there already more than a handful of times. I wasn’t surprised this time when I walked in and I saw another new face behind the counter as every time I had been in here, there was someone different. My flip flops were loud as I walked across the store and the guy barely looked up. He was reading a glass blowing magazine. I walked over to the case of pipes and I looked through them. I love glass. I have too many pipes. But the perfect bubbler has alluded me so I’m always watchful.
"You have High Times?" I asked.
"No. We don’t care anything like that." We started bull shitting about glass. I did my best to sound like I knew what the hell I was talking about and had him fill in some blanks for me regarding various techniques that I was curious about. I don’t blow. I just like knowing things. After we talked about pipes and preferred smoking methods, without ever mentioning our smoke of choice, he told me that they wouldn’t carry anything with a pot leaf or anything regarding pot on it. Hence why they can’t carry the mag I was after.
We started bull shitting about life. He was up from Utah dedicating two years to learning to blow glass from a guy that owns the shop and is a bad ass artist. I mentioned I knew a guy who I guess was now living down there. He said that was where he was up from. I looked at him and realized that he looked just like my friend down there. I mention his name and he said that that was his little brother. He went into how his brother was a little pissed at him for moving back here, as he was suppose to be helping him with his mortgage.
"But I just had to tell him that I was dedicating two years of my life to learning to blow glass and help this guy out with getting this shop going..." He trailed off slightly. "I sure miss it down there though, less people. A lot prettier than this place. That’s the thing. You gotta be able to walk out on your front porch and look around and have it not even matter if you drop dead right there because that’s your home and you’re fuckin’ happy with it." It wasn’t the most eloquent ramble I’d ever heard, but that made it more honest. It wasn’t rehearsed or polished, just a great moment of honesty between two strangers.
He was right. Smith was right. As I drove around to like five more head shops looking for a copy of High Times without finding anything, I kept thinking about some book I had read. I can’t remember who it is, but I remember this guy had written some shitty play that was influenced very heavily by James Hilton’s Lost Horizon about a guy searching for Shangri-la and he kept saying that over and over again. "I am searching for Shangri-la." I think it was a Kurt Vonnegut book, but I can’t be sure
Me too.
I don’t know what that means other than I’m searching for the right setting in which to search for my own perfection. I’ve been a few places and like a lot of people, when I am away from home, I think that I’d like to move there, but then who isn’t happy for a couple of days when they are away from home for a couple of days if you’re having a decent time.
I’ll probably keep wandering around on my weekends and searching for perfection and that will lead to something worth writing about. Because isn’t that what everyone who has ever done anything worth mentioning has been doing; chasing their own rainbow?
I’m searching for Shangri-la.

Birthday Reflections - The Good Life

Yesterday was my birthday. I went into it a little apathetic, but I found myself sitting at a table in front of a Turkey dinner (yes in July), with my lady and my best friend. I had on new slippers and a new tank top. In the back room was a loaded pipe and a big stack of comics. Near me, was some cartoons on DVD. I was sitting so that I could see the garden that my lady and I have been working on. At that moment, I truly realized how lucky I am and how truly great of a life that I have. Lately, I’ve been feeling the stresses of money and thinking that life is pretty tough/unfair, but at that moment all that faded away and I saw that my life is pretty fucking great. Feels good to be so content. So many people took time to make my day good and just to call me and give me some nice words for my birthday, that I couldn’t help but to pause and take note of what a lucky guy I am. It’s times like this that I feel not only a overwhelming love for the people in my life, but for God as well. I don’t write about my faith a lot, because it’s very personal for me, but I’ll say this: I appreciate that the good things in my life and the joy and love I experience is purely through the grace of God. The fact that all the wonderful things in my life, stem from the love I share with my family and friends, reminds me that even though I don’t acknowledge it often enough, that love is a extension of God’s love for us. So that’s pretty cool. The fact that I am alive amazes me sometimes and that in a world where things suck for so many, I’ve got it pretty damned good.

A Few Thoughts

Figured I better write today. I know how I am when I let things sit to long; I never come back to them.
My life lately has been okay. I’ve been working in the yard a lot. Gardening and what not. It’s been nice. There is something really great about being a bit on the stoned side and planting some flowers, or a bush, or a shrub or whatever. My yard isn’t exactly turning into the secret garden that I would like, but that’s okay. It’s doing pretty good. Plants are fuckin’ expensive. I’m going to build a green house before next year and I’m starting my own seeds. The savings on plants in one year should pay for the green house. Plus I can give my folks and other friends who garden some plants. I’ll be like Santa only I’ll hand out ferns.
The cool thing about working in the yard so much has been the change in my interaction with the neighbors. I had this hedge made up of several tall, conical, evergreen type trees. You know what these are, anytime somebody doesn’t want to look at their neighbors they put these things up. So mine was like 8 feet tall and right along the sidewalk. It was ugly, and it was weird, but I was somehow convinced in my head that it gave me much needed privacy. I now realize that it didn’t and privacy is an illusion and not needed.
I trimmed the hedge down from about 8 feet down to 40 inches and all of a sudden all my neighbors were talking to me. It was like I brought down the fuckin’ Berlin Wall. My natural instinct was to be kind of offended and irritated, but then I thought about it and realized that there was no reason I should care if it made my neighbors happy that the big unkempt hedge was being taken down. So now I like the new openness, both in regards to my interaction with my neighbors and in regards to how my yard looks.
My and my one neighbor are have been leaning over the fence and bullshitting. He’s a lot older than me (he has kids my age), but we still find stuff to talk about. Mostly yard stuff. We talk about that a lot. Before I started doing all the work on my house, he said that he wasn’t into the yard thing. Now he says that he’s into it a little more. I like to think that it’s because of the hard work me and my lately have put in. I like that idea.
So my little slice of suburbia is feeling mighty good lately.
I’ve had this odd feeling lately though. This nagging sense of everyone perceiving me as a failure and my inability to accomplish anything. It’s really been getting me down sometimes. This one lady at my work (she thinks she’s kind of physic, which she may be, but I think she’s just smart and thinks about life as a spiritual journey) occasionally has these messages her brain gave her about me when she was out in the mountains soul searching and early this week she told me that as I go through my healing (I’m not sure what specifically I’m healing from, but I suppose we all are) that every time I make some progress the world and my self will just point out everything I am doing wrong. That’s kind of how I’ve felt like it’s been lately, every time I feel successful or happy with an accomplishment a hundred other failures or inadequacies jump into my mind. It’s a weird thing. Lately, I have these times where I just feel like the fat, fifteen year old, crying in the shower because I don’t know what wrong with me and why the world has me under a microscope. Then after a couple hours of pouting or freaking out, I feel okay. Let’s hear it for 2nd puberty!
But I’ve gotta admit, when I’m not thinking about the fact that I’m a fat ass, or that I haven’t even thought of working on my book, or that I haven’t been tying flies or as much as I am dying to go and fish, I haven’t been. I’m pretty happy. Maybe more than I deserve to be.
Maybe there’s a theme that ties all these different thoughts together, but I doubt it. But I’ve written and posted something.

Just Being A Hero

What to write... What to write...
What’s been happening? Works been fine, home life is good. The yard is looking nice.
Here’s the most exciting thing that has happened recently.
My lady and I were out walking the dog around the block. The dog is getting up there in years and we can only take her on short walks so we walk her and then I’m walked for a bit further (you know, to ward off my inevitable heart attack).
You need to know; I am afraid of dogs, not a little afraid of dogs, fuckin’ terrified of dogs, or at least, historically, I have been. I’ve been bit chased, and cornered by more dogs than most people. I have so many stories of being tortured by dogs and it has developed into a fear that is so bad I often won’t walk past a dog that is not contained or on a chain. They make my ass sweat (why do my fears always cause some sort of butt reaction (sweat, pucker, etc)?). So I am not a fan of dogs that I am not acquainted with and even then, if they ever growl at me or get aggressive in any way they are off the Christmas card list.
So we are walking the dog and just being the picture of suburban loveliness when I hear the unmistakable sound of dog claws scraping as a dog hurriedly charges. I turned around to see my worst fear. Charging pit bull. I’ve known pitbulls, I’ve even been friends with a few, so I historically have no prejudice against them, but I am scared of them. I like my nuts and I like my dick and I am very scared of them being bit/torn off by dogs and I have always figured with their cock-level-height (with neck extended and slight jump) and the whole razor sharp teeth with lock jaw thing, that a pit bull would be the best candidate from the dog party to bite my wiener off. There is a fairly common picture of a pitbull that is charging at the camera with it’s gums flapping in the wind and it’s mouth agape showing it’s many teeth. Have you seen it? Anyhow that is what I saw. Then I saw it killing our dog, probably injuring my lady as she tries to fend it off and me getting my wiener bit off in there somewhere. So I kind of ran at the dog and tried and as tough as i could said something "No, no, no get out of here." I think I probably screeched a little bit. So before I can stop it, the pitbull jumps up on our dog and puts her mouth around her neck, so I charge at it (like a fuckin’ super hero [speaking of which, it’s new comic book day and they are killing off the Flash today, so it should be interesting}) and it jumps off her and starts to run home before it actually clamped down. And you’re right, I am very tough. So, I hear the fuckin retard who own the dogs (because let’s face it 99 out of 100 pitbull owners are total fuckin’ idiots) who is underneath his car doing something shouts at his daughter to get their dog. So they come and grab it. So I’m feeling tough because I am and I take a look at the dog. It’s not quite the harbinger of death that I first saw, it was a little fat, had really long nipples (because idiots don’t spay their dogs and as I said, it’s mostly morons who own pitbulls) and I think I may have noted cataracts. The little girls are trying to get the dog to come home and apologizing, more than I can say for their fuck-tard father, and then dog makes another rush. So I do my retard dance and scream and it is again scared and the little girls get it home.
The really funny part is our dog and my lady did not even turn around during the whole thing and there were like ten kids playing baseball in the street who watched it all, but probably didn’t see the many toothed monster charging at my beloveds or see it try to bite the coolest dog I know. So I just looked like a big fat tard stomping my feet and saying "hey, hey, hey".
But I’ve gotta tell you, my dick feels just a little bit bigger than it did before.

SWM seeks a Muse

Is it just me, or is everyone afraid of being inspired? When is the last time that you saw people stand in awe at the sound of another’s voice or words or images or sound? When was the last time people were activated by another or by an event? The last time I can remember was on September 11 and I think I was a little disgusted. It seemed more like a purchasing frenzy of everyone scrambling to buy the most flags to hang on their houses. And that’s the thing: The only thing that people seemed to be inspired to do is buy stuff.
Inspiration is something that paves the path to a life less ordinary. It’s our compass to discovery and to creation. Maybe it’s because I never leave my house, but I just see the channel flipping glaze in everyone’s eyes and I don’t exactly see people having a desire to create or experience much of anything. What I tend to see is a love of consumption, but then this is America.
For so long the only message pumped at us from every angle is "BUY, BUY, BUY!!!" and I’m not really sure what to do with that anymore. I want to live and I want to experience a genuine life, but it becomes so hard in the face of push to consume and the push to brand myself or to shove myself into a marketer’s key demographic.
I just wanna live, man.
Maybe it’s because when I think of the past (not in my life necessarily, but the good-ol`-days before I was born), I think about it in the context of these great writers who communicated an image that is perhaps overly romantic or fails to mention the bill boards.
The other day, I went to this place that I’ve gone to for years to have lunch. I got a cup of coffee and they had commercials for local businesses on the cup. Nothing is sacred.
I just would love to hear the words of someone or see something that made me feel something new. Maybe it’s my fault, maybe I don’t search it out. Maybe I should stop waiting for a muse to float angelically through my ceiling and whisper the magical words of epiphany to me. Maybe I need to cast away all of my earthly belongings and wander off into the sunset and find it. I don’t know. I’m at a loss. It seems like wonderment, awe, and moments of epiphany are in short supply these days. Is this just me? Am I letting society and Coke have too much control over my life? How do I stop it?
Chime in people because this is eating at me.
I hate the world.

Driving Around

This weekend, my lady and I went for a drive in the mountains. We were going to go camping, but we had forgotten it was father’s day, so we just went to scope out camp sites. The two of us are compulsive planners (every day the question "what’s the plan?" comes up at least five times between the two of us) so we figured we could take the trip over this weekend to find camp grounds that we dug and return next weekend when to go camping.
Saturday morning was the perfect kind of day to be in the mountains. It was overcast and drizzling and cool enough that a hooded sweatshirt was in order. Perfect Pacific Northwest weather (if you don’t think so, stay the hell out of here, because it’s pretty much what we have). So we packed up stuff to make a hot lunch and packed up our little "to go" dope kit and hit the road after a bong hit.
We started east on Highway 410. Chinook pass was a childhood terror of mine and one of the things that proved several times a year that my father feared nothing. He would be calm as our car drove just a couple of feet from drops that were sure to kill us all. I would pretend to be asleep so that my bother wouldn’t tease me about not looking over the edge. My mom would also pretend to be asleep. I had driven over Chinook Pass alone for the first time last year and I am happy to report that it, like many of my other childhood monsters, has lost some of it’s hold on me. It’s just a road with a couple of spots that make my asshole pucker.
So we drove and we had our little glass spoon pipe with a bowl loaded in it close at hand. I was taking a hit or two every 45 minutes, just enough to keep the world looking pretty and to make me feel like I was in a fond memory. My lady indulged a little more as she wasn’t driving and I believe that she has a couple extra lungs that require a bit more dope than me. She had never been over chinook pass before, so the first time we came around a bend where you really get a sense of how high you are, she screeched and buried her head in her pillow. It was pretty funny. She accused me of purposely not telling her about how crazy high it is up there and she was probably right, I did know that she would freak out a little.
The top of Chinook was foggy as hell and there was snow on the ground (not the road) that appeared to be a couple of feet deep yet. I hate driving in fog, especially when the stuff you can’t see is generally drop offs of a few hundred feet, but what are you going to do? We reached the summit and then began to drop down into the pine forest of Eastern Washington. It’s funny, when you cross over onto the other side of Washington, it seems like everything becomes less crammed together: the trees, the population, the cities. Everything just seems to be a little more spread out. I think that is why it feel so much less tense than the west side. It’s nice.
We drove and smoked and snacked and checked out a bunch of camp grounds and we made notes about each one and even went as far as to note the best camp sites in each one for the purposes of making reservations later. We agreed most the time on the best spots on each and it was a lot of fun. I think we checked out just shy of ten camp grounds.
We stopped to have lunch at a trail head. I set up the camp stove and started to re-heat a couple of burgers that we had barbequed the night before, while my lady set up the chairs and went and pissed in the woods (for which I am very proud of her). There was a obviously man made (or at least man altered) pond that was kind pretty clear and I asked her to watch it and tell me if anything jumped or rose. I had brought my fishing stuff and planned on making a cast or two somewhere that day and if this pond had some stockers dumped in it, I’d be happy to get a quick fix in. As soon as I turned back to the camp stove, she hollered "One just jumped." I turned and she pointed "Right out in the middle." So I decided that I’d fish a bit after lunch.
We ate and the burgers were good, just as they were the night before. I had been keeping an eye on the pond hoping that I would be able to confirm that fish did indeed have residence in there and then the sun came out and I hit the water and I said "One should jump just to let me know someone’s home." And I’ll be damned if one didn’t jump. I’d say a little 6-8 inch trout and so I fished while she sat and read a book. I tried a dry fly for a while, and then a couple of different bugger type patterns. I never caught anything, but I hade fun watching the newts swim up for air or whatever the hell they do. And I’ve never seen so many tadpoles in all my life. There were tens of thousands of them all along the shore line swimming all togther in slow ovals. It just looked like a black cloud until you actually looked and then you saw that they were indeed infant frogs. I hollered and my lady came over to look and even snapped a couple of good photos of them.
After that we headed home. We saw a couple of elk on the side of the road and I think I may have caught a glimpse of a whole herd sitting in a clearly, but I didn’t turn around to confirm it.
Truly, one of the best days I’ve had in a while. It’s nice to know that the world is still out there and essentially unchanged even as I have grown and forgotten so much. A really great day.

Wind, Cutthroat, And A Little Dope - A Nice Weekend In The Desert

I was driving in eastern Washington this weekend and from a ways off it looked like there were a bunch of balloons or maybe large birds clustered in the air over the freeway. As I got closer, I saw that they were tumble weeds caught in a dust devil. The thing was about thirty feet tall and formed right over the top of the freeway, it was pretty impressive. There was about thirty tumble weeds spinning in the air but there wasn’t a ton of dust so it just looked like they were circling around one another and rising and falling. It reminded me a bit of that scene on American Beauty with the bag floating around, only this was a little more ominous, though still quite nice to look at and it gave me this odd feeling like when I’m dreaming and in my dream I see something that isn’t suppose to be there, like a flying saucer or someone that is suppose to be dead. As I drove through it, the car shook and a large tumble weed smacked the windshield. It’s funny. I’ve always seen dust devils from afar, but they usually just contained dust, but this time it was right there for me to interact with. As I approached it, I was kind of amazed and I felt very pleased with the world right then. When I drove through it, it just kept twisting and blowing the little pieces of bushes, up into the air. It didn’t notice me.
The dust devil reminded me of another sight that kind of took my breath away this weekend. A friend and I were fishing this lovely little river. I was alone fishing this hole at the base of a large rock cliff. My friend had wandered up stream. I saw a fish rise, so I tied on this real pretty quill bodied blue wing olive pattern that I had tied for a trip last summer. I cast to this slick where I had seen a trout rise a little before and I watched as this nice sized cutthroat materialized from nothingness rose up and ate my fly, I could see the entire fish, looking like it was forged from gold or maybe glass. I watched as it opened it’s mouth and took in my fly and then lower itself perfectly back to the bottom of the pool like it has probably done thousands of times. It always amazes me the way that you can stand a look at a pool or a slick and not see a thing. The fish just sit there invisible and then all of sudden they let you see them and even from a distance you can see that they are pretty and bright and it makes you wonder how they can stay camouflaged against such a subdued back ground. I almost forgot to set the hook.

This weekend I also remembered how wonderful it feels to sit out side and smoke dope on a summers night. There is nothing else quite like that.

My War of Pettiness

I’m petty. I don’t think anything brings me as much joy as my war of paltry attacks against the society that has scorned me. By society it generally comes down to coworkers, though I have been known to take on particularly objectionable strangers at the store, on the road , etc. when their offense deserves it.
The past few days, I’ve been at war with my co-workers. Why? Because I hate them. Why? Because how can you not hate people that you have to be around all day? And how can you not hate people that you have to be around all day and the only thing they know to talk about is what they hate about today, work, each other, etc. I know, that’s kind of the complaining pot calling the complaining kettle black, but I’m better for the following reasons.
1) I’m way more funny in how I complain and I do a lot of it in writing
2) I do most of my bitching in writing so that makes it art, thereby forgiving it.
3) I acknowledge my own hypocrisy and I do not try and defend it whereas my coworkers don’t even see the fact that are being a bunch of wining, bitching, slug ls of feelings of entitlement and thinking they are such a fuckin’ snow flake.
4)I me and they are not.
Anyhow, I’ve been waging my war lately. I just like upsetting these people. No big reason behind it, other than I secretly hate them all and like them to be upset. I’m a bad person, but you can’t fight what you are.
Today, several plans that I laid the groundwork for are coming together.
First, Operation Hire Back the Girl Everyone Wanted to Fail:
So a few weeks ago, I hired this gal who just moved up here from the south. She was a super sweet girl and did really well. I work in an office mostly full of white people and new girl was black and I was actually shocked and disappointed to find out that I work with a bunch of bigots. No one said anything, but they treated her like a novelty and were always pointing out her "blackness" and were very eye rolly about her. I’ll tell you what though, she was the best damned hire we have had in quite a while. She was professional, did great on the phones, handled more lines than our receptionist is capable of doing and excelled at ever task I gave her. But all these fuckin’ hens around here would just sit around and say things like "She won’t be here long." and "Do you really think she is going to get it?" It’s not that fuckin’ hard of a job, but these cunts around here like to act like it is. So anyway a great girl to work with, oh yeah, and she used to work at Hooters so everyone was like "Slut" and acted like she was such a lower class person. They ignored the fact that she held that job for six years which is longer than most of them have held any job and not to mention I know about all these hens and the dudes they bang and the ones they banged before they got married. (I love email surveillance). Anyhow, she quit without notice because she had just moved up here from a long ways a way to be with her boyfriend who was transferred here and I guess the shit hit the fan and it sounds like she freaked out over a dirty house or something like that and she called me and told me she was quitting and going home. I was bummed. I love working with people who aren’t too good for their job and know how to listen to direction and know the right way to present themselves in a professional manner. So then she called me a couple of days later she calls and she says that she’s staying here and if we were willing she’d like her job back. I told her I’d let her know in a couple of days. So I decided that I’d hire her back. So the whole office found out that she called and asked for her job back (that’s the trouble with having calls go through a receptionist)and everyone one was coming to my office asking if we were hiring her back and I just told them I hadn’t decided yet. I already knew, I was going to hire her back on a part time basis and see how things work for 90 days or so. But I wasn’t telling anyone. And then today, actually in the middle of me writing this, I met with her and hired her back, but before she even got out of her car, I had people in my office saying "you’re not really hiring her back are you?" and just being cunts in general, like she had done something to them personally. Here’s the thing though, I know that she is going to quit again. I know that I shouldn’t hire her back. I know it’s a terrible thing to do, but I don’t care, I love watching these bitches run around flapping their jaws like it has anything to do with them. I really love watching it, they just work themselves into a tizzy and then when you tell them things like "It really doesn’t concern you." They go even crazier, but they can get as mad as they want, because when it comes down to it they have no ability to make any decisions at all and the beauty is, because they’re all sniveling cunts. I love life.
Second, Operation Piss off the self righteous college student.
I hate college students. Why do they think they are so smart? I know that they’re reading lots of text and taking test and getting drunk and fucking each other and everything and if that makes them all super smart and what not, but do they have to be fuckin’ obnoxious? They’re not the first fuckin’ ones to hate Bush, you know? Any how, we have these one little brat that works here that thinks she’s pretty hot shit and walks around acting like not only is she an expert on all matters domestic and international, but like she is a coinsure of the best in high fashion that Target can provide. But you know, that open back blouse would look a lot better if her back wasn’t so hairy and acne filled. Anyway, she comes in two days a week and acts like she deserves the best desk, the best computer, on and on. She snivels about her pay and how she should receive a pay increase in advance for learning new skills. So about a two months ago, I noticed her that she had a pretty fancy key board at her computer. It wasn’t really all that fancy, just with the CD player controls and some web browser (Gosh I hope web browsers isn’t an out of date term) and it’s shaped all nice for typing. She said something like "Oh, I just asked them to order me a new keyboard and they got me this one." I know that was bull shit, but whatever. So the other day, I’m hooking this computer that we got back from the shop up and I see this nice keyboard, and I decide that I want it. So I take it. I really don’t give much of a shit about the key board, but it bugged me that she thought that she deserved it and then lied about it and fuck, she works like sixteen hours a week at the most and I’ve been here for like seven years. So I took it. I can fire her, I can take her key board. That’s right, I fuckin’ said. I may not agree with the system, but it’s the one I live in right. So I took it. Oh yeah, and we’ve been having some computer problems at work lately, so she hasn’t had a desk top to work on lately and I’ve been having her use the lap top. And then I come in to work a few weeks ago and there is this note triple taped to my chair from her telling me to make sure and call the computer guy so that she has a desk top to work on. That really bugged me. I know what my fucking job is, and I know that I have three computers with the computer guy right now, because we buy pieces of shit and they are always in the shop and I know that we need them back. I could give a shit less if she works on a desk top or a lap top. So that’s the other reason I took it. And I’ve seen her go to desk and take it and move it to whatever desk she’s working on. I’ve told people not to do that. Not for any real reason other than it’s a waste of time and it bugs me when people think they can move stuff around that doesn’t belong to them. So for all of these reasons, I took the key board. I watch her come in this morning and go to her desk and then start walking around to every desk looking for the keyboard. She finally comes to my office and start to tell that someone stole her keyboard and sees me typing a way on it and says
"You took my keyboard."
"It was upstairs. I like it." I told her.
"It was ordered for me." Then I watched her remember her lie. I love that face. Then shoe goes on to tell me all of the good things about it.
"I work forty hours a week. I’m keeping it." I went back to working. She stood there for a minute and then walked out. Now she won’t talk to me. I don’t care.
Well, there are a couple of other things that I’ve been doing lately, but those are the one’s that have been the most fun for me and this entry is way to long.

Aliens Controlled My Childhood

Fear has been a big part of my life for as long as I can remember. Fear controls me. It’s right up there with guilt and shame as far as what motivates me. So what am I afraid of? You name it, I’m scared of it. Well that’s not entirely true any more. Frankly it may be, but I’ve just set my life up as such that I really don’t have to deal with my fears much. Except spiders, but lucky for me, my cat is a spider hunter.
I don’t think I’ve ever a brave person (except for a six to twelve month period when I wanted to die and just didn’t give a shit). I think I was always liable to be scared, and grab my mother’s leg, but I remember the first time fear gripped me and changed my life. I think I still feel the effects of this even now.
I was five or six years old. Everything was kind of going along just fine and dandy in my little kid life. I hadn’t yet come to the realization yet, that I was poor and we were living in squalor. I was pretty happy. Content with life and just kind of happy. My dad’s sister and her husband came over one night (we had a lot of visitors back then, because we were the poorest of a generally poor family and people like to visit down the social-economic ladder) and I think it was shortly after we purchased our first VCR. My aunt and uncle had a huge VCR tape collection, all of them were recorded from TV or pirated. They brought over this tape called UFO’s are real. I’m pretty sure my dad and my uncle went out back and smoked a doobie before we watched it, because they were silent and very into it. My dad was and is a chronic sci-fi geek at the heart anyway so the hope of hot-ass aliens sluts was never far from the front of his mind. So there we all were, piled in our tiny living room in front of our second hand television watching people tell their horrific stories of being abducted, probed, and whatever else aliens do. I was doing okay, I was creeped out, but not terrified and then it happened. They showed a drawing of one of these big eyed, reptilian looking mother fuckers and it was over, man. It was just fuckin’ over. I didn’t take a piss without waking up my brother and having him come with me for like two years and if he refused, I would go and piss on the furnace that ran up the wall in the living room. It would evaporate the pee, so no one would know. I don’t know why the hallway was the where I was sure the Aliens would lurk, but it was. I did not willingly go outside in the dark, or even in a dark room for probably ten years without someone near by. I thought about aliens, getting abducted by them and just turning the corner and seeing one about once per second until I was a teenager. I pissed the bed until I was eight because I just wouldn’t get up to go to the bathroom. I still don’t think my parents know that all the money they spent on my "don’t pee the bed alarm" was wasted money. I knew every time I pissed the bed. I would just lay there and do it. I would much rather face the shame of pissing myself than set foot into the darkness. I remember vividly a handful of nightmares that I had involving aliens. It was always, turn the corner and their they are and that was what I always feared. I never imagined being beemed up, or anything like that, I wasn’t scared of that. I was just scared that I would see one and no one else would be there to confirm it. I had friendships end and major fights with my parents as a result of not stepping foot into the darkness. I would go home from friends houses because they were watching alien movies, I was fuckin’ scared. Seriously for a decade or better, I was just scared. Like I said, I began designing my life around the fear. What I would and wouldn’t do was dictated by how much alien exposure the event produced.
Then, when I was twenty, I was up on a mountain at a festival of kinds and the entire camp was asleep, except for me and this one dude, who I didn’t really know and we were looking at stars through a telescope. He was focusing in on something or other when I looked over the right and saw a perfect row of five orange lights slowly and evenly lowering toward the trees. I wasn’t scared. I figured that this guy would know what they were. I said "Hey, what’s that?" And the fucker freaked out. He was all like "Oh my God! My first UFO sighting!" And began trying to change lense out on the scope looking for the right lense to look at something that close. He handed me a pair of binoculars and was like "Here, see if you can see anything." Then I was nervous, not scared as much as nervous. There were like five hundred people sleeping on the side of this mounting and I didn’t give a shit if I died, as long as the rest of these people saw everything that I did. I ran up to camp to wake everyone up, but they all just mumbled as I excitedly told them that we were about to have a close encounter. I ran back down there and looked desperately through the binoculars, but then it had disappeared. My friend with the big scope just quietly tried to de-fog one of his lenses and I was just stunned. Not so much that I had seen a UFO but that I wasn’t really scared. I was kind of stoked. Then it was back. The five orange lights. I looked at it through the binoculars and he managed to get a scope on it. I was sure I saw shape between each of the lights. The he got the scope in focus. Turns out, we were looking at parachute flairs (we could see the smoke coming off the lights) from a nearby army base. I felt very liberated as I walked back to camp in the darkness.
I’m not totally over that fear, btu I took the final step today. I ordered a copy of UFO’s are real from Amazon. I’m going to watch it and see if I can avoid another decade of fear.

Thoughts on Thoughts

My mind has been in an odd place the last couple of days. As I start, this I really have no idea what I’m going to write, but something needs to be written. So lately, my life’s been kind of building up to this one big project and then it ended. The last couple of days have kind of been a sigh of relief from that and I’ve accomplished next to nothing in them, which is fine. I’m pretty excited to have all the work behind me, but there are plenty of other things that I need to do and now I need to get started moving on them.
I’ve been feeling a bit out of sorts lately. I don’t’ really know what it is that I want to do. Join the fuckin’ club, right? If somebody asked me what I wanted to do in life, I have an answer; I have words to tell them, but sometimes lately, I just don’t feel it. I feel like my previous passion has become an almost artificial agenda. Maybe that’s it, I don’t like feeling like I have an agenda. I tend to dislike people with some cause that they are constantly trying to move forward. Then again, I usually dislike people like me anyway. Maybe it’s that life and my goals seem so polished and inorganic and like it’s all a sales pitch. It all just makes too much sense. I don’t think I like that, it’s not natural. I like having holes in things that I can stick my finger in and just keep messing with it until the hole consumes the thought.
I know that I’m more fond of the hypothetical than I am the tangible sometimes. I like to think about things. I like to sit and mull them over again and again and again. Anything. Not just my future, but things like fishing. Most of the time, I like thinking about fishing and getting ready for the trip more than I like actually doing the fishing sometimes. That’s not totally accurate. I guess I like the planning and thinking and fantasizing part of the trip a lot because I never tangle my leader or break off my fly when I’m just thinking about it and those times where that slips into my head, I just laugh and quickly undo my mess and I’m back to catching fish in no time flat. In my head, these little tangles and mishaps are easily slid to the side with a laugh and they don’t bother me; Of course when it comes down to it, I rarely have the kind of easy patience that makes picking apart a bird’s nest of leader and flies seem like not that big of deal. Clearly I can’t just sit and think about fishing and be happy all of the time, I must fish. Sometimes, when I’m going to a new river, I’m so excited I read everything I can on it, I know what is suppose to be hatching, I’ve talked to people who point me toward specific holes, etc. and by the time I get to the river, I’m shocked because it looks all wrong. The road is too close to the shore, the water is much higher than it ought to be, the fish are smaller and less willing to participate, etc. Sometimes, I even get bummed out about it.
I guess that’s kind of how things seem to be right now. Things are going good. Plans are coming together nicely. I’m feeling the joys of success in many things, and that feels... odd. It’s satisfying, but in a whole other way. I don’t know. I suppose that’s the difference between people who are satisfied with their lives and those who are not. Some people are able to sit and relish in what they’ve done and see it to completion and others just want to figure out the next thing to do, even if they don’t really want to do it.
I guess that’s all I have for today.

Grandma - R.I.P.

My grandmother's funeral is this weekend. My good friend and I were exchanging emails this morning and I mentioned that I would be going to her funeral this weekend. She passed several months ago. She was cremated and has been sitting on my parents buffet ever since. It's been weird walking passed her every time I'm over there I need to use the restroom, but somehow that seems right for my family, tragic, sick, and a little funny. Anyhow, my friend and I were exchanging email and I started to tell him the above (that she has been dead for a few months, etc) and then the below came out. I know it hits on some stuff that normally I wouldn't, but I want to remember these thoughts and I will feel better if the 8 or so of you that read this thing (thanks by the way) get to hear my thoughts on something beyond what I hate or some other irrelevant rumblings. So here it is and I promise I won't make a habit of this.
My dad's mom is a sad story, because really it was being alone and without friends that I think killed her. But I remember her when I was a kid and she was a doting grandmother who loved my, brother, my cousins and me very much. She was feisty and strong, she raised six children on her own after her first husband died when my Dad was a teenager. She suffered through the loss of one of her children at an early age, but remained strong for her children. She suffered through the turmoil of children who went down some bad paths, but she was there when they needed to find their way back. She remarried once, briefly, and was strong enough to leave him when he became abusive. She loved her family and they loved her. She went camping until she was in her 60's or 70's and still enjoyed the woods even after. It was very hard watching her fade, and it was a relief when she died. I said good bye to her (in a way) via phone while s he was in the hospital a few weeks before she passed. She understood and she knew who I was and that is a real gift. I loved my grandmother for the woman she was and because she always made me feel safe and comfortable. She was a good lady and I'm glad she is with God. She wasn't woman who spoke about God and faith aloud, but to live her life and not have crumpled beneath the pressure, of it all, she must have known him. When I think about the strength it took to live her life, I admire her and love her and that is what I will think of when I think of Grandma

Two Ways To Become An Asshole

I guess all my friends, and probably myself, are at that point in life where things really start changing in big ways. Kids, careers, cults, and graduate schools graduations. As I’ve watched most of my friends degrade into different varieties of dog shit, I’ve come to a conclusion that’s not all that startling, but as I haven’t written anything (that’s a lie, I wrote two and half fantastic novel pages yesterday) in a while I have the following sentence rattling around in my head since Sunday night. There is nothing that gives a person a greater sense of self importance than government and procreation.
I’ll start at beginning. The other day, I was talking to this guy that I know who recently was hired on as staff for a state senator. He’s pretty proud of himself, maybe rightly so, I guess government, even the lowest forms of it, is suppose to be important. He’s always been a bit of a... squealy, contrary, whiner who enjoys nothing more than talking in circles, never making a point and claiming victory of the debate, even when there isn’t really a debate going on. So naturally he was drawn toward politics. I’m also convinced that he was drawn toward the politics of his father because he was never able to top his father’s biting, concise, though often irrelevant debate ending one liners. He’s always been an extremist when it comes to being a liberal. That’s cool, I’m down with extremism, I guess, but his sense of undebatable rightness even in light of his inability to really make a point has always rubbed me raw. I won’t claim to be a good debater, I’m not. There was a time when I thought I was and really wanted to be (political punk and all that), but now I realize, that my roll in life isn’t to be a master debater (that’s funny and you know it), but rather that of a cynic and maybe a sarcastic asshole. Debaters, master or not, always seem to have everything worked out too well, to be real. Academic bullshit. Anyhow, so my buddy has been in his new job for a couple of months, down at the capital building, and clearly feeling pretty impressed with himself. He’s always been an absolute environmentalist (vocally) and ready to point out the wrongs of the modern world, etc., etc., etc., but apparently his love of man and man’s "accomplishments" has grown dramatically since his transition to senator’s aid. And why wouldn’t it? Being a part of the process, wherein a few assholes (those are elected assholes, mister. {Who votes anymore?}) make big decisions not based on what is right, but what will get them reelected. But it feels big time and righteous to play a part in making laws, because after all, you are part of the elite, who are bossing other people around. I talked to my old pal for thirty or forty minutes and in the time he bashed the notion of dam removal (even two completely useless ones), basically said that man freaking out over global warming, etc. is arrogant, because the world will go on and new life will evolve, and basically poo-pooed all notions of conservation and environmentalism. Okay, maybe he’s right, maybe new life would evolve, but isn’t kind a big thing to fuck with and isn’t just a tad on the really fucking arrogant side to act like it’s your place to make the call about whether or not to let the world end. Here’s the real kicker, he’s a fuckin’ democrat. But his senator is in an area full of red neck assholes who don’t see the point of a river unless you can kill anything that swims in, cut down ever tree within a hundred miles of it and flush your toilet in it. So it’s natural right? That’s the trouble, nobody has a die hard sense of what’s right and what’s wrong anymore. It’s just how can I keep people happy and get reelected. I’m getting off point, the point is my buddy’s always been a bit of an arrogant, self important fuck (that’s probably why were such good friends, I’ve been saying I was a genius for years), but now, he’s a justified, self-important fuck because that is what government creates and whole bunch of self important assholes, who sitting around pat each other on the back and perpetuate a system that is quite frankly oppressive and favors the rich. I hate democracy (Why don’t you move?{Because, I want to stay here and bitch and hope that eventually America will stop be a screaming fucking toddler and re-invent itself as a nation of people who are socially conscious and think about something other than cool gadgets and revenge on Arabs.})
Now on to procreation. Babies. People act like making a baby took a lot more effort than it really did. Stick in your wiener, grunt and out comes baby after nine months of a woman acting like a martyr. What’s really funny, as pointed out by my lady, is that many of those sweet precious little angels where conceived while the chick was being banged from behind and phrases like "Yeah, take it bitch." and "Fuck me, you stud." filled the air. Isn’t life beautiful? Anyhow, I don’t care what anybody says, after you have a kid you start to suck. You’ll never see it, but everyone who knows you will. Those who you know without kids will notice how lame and g-rated you’ve become and those with kids will sit back and be happy that you are now just as trapped as them. It’s really weird. When my really good friends had a kid, I thought things would stay pretty relaxed and there would just be a kid hanging out and everything would be normal. Nope. Let me re-phrase that, fuck nope. While mommy is basking in the glow of squeezing out a trophy and how cute of a kid she made (it is a pretty cute kid, I’d give it a 7/10) and showing all the cool tricks it can do like smile and sit on it’s belly (the nice wholesome mommy only came after months raging hormone bitchiness and constant over defensiveness over everything {DON’T TELL ME HOW TO RAISE MY BABY!!! IT’S MY BABY!! I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT CHILDREN!} Which is probably true, she did have it her gut for nine months, and if that doesn’t embed total knowledge of the complex workings of human mind then I don’t know what does. A mother naturally knows which television shows their kid should watch, it’s part of the miracle of motherhood.), Daddy is sitting around being an expert on everything, not just babies, but everything. Like all the world is his child just begging for him to direct their lives. Now let me be honest. I am a self proclaimed expert on anything that I decide to open my mouth about, but then I tend to know everything, about everything. But this new daddy, is all of a sudden all about pointing out anything that might be an example of me becoming more domesticated. I’ll admit, fuck I’ve been admitting for years. I’m getting fucking old. I’m getting tame as hell. My battles against the evil world seem less important. Cable TV may not be the evil monster that I once thought it was. Wall heaters are convenient. Human remains sitting on the coffee table might be a little bit childish. Maybe I think playing dress-up so that everybody knows that I am cool is a little silly these days, but hey fucker, I’m honest with myself. And I don’t really drink anymore because it upsets my belly. I like the typical suburban aspects of my life, I like my front lawn (too many damned weeds, but I’ll get it there), I like my back patio, I like to barbeque and I like sitting down petting the dog or cat and watching some sitcoms. Oh yeah, and I like smoking a big fat bowl about four times an evening like half of the other people in the burbs do. But this weird need of new daddy to point out everything and make these little comments like we were in a pissing match over who’s maintaining there edge, is irri-fuckin’-tating . I’m done with it, man. Take it. I don’t want to be cool, I don’t want to play dress up. I don’t want more tatoos and I don’t want to be cool and go to shows. I don’t even want to go to the fucking bars. I just want to fish, smoke dope, and read comics. Maybe finish the most genius novel of all time, and try to leave behind something beyond a big pile of trash with my name on it. I don’t get why it’s a problem. Oh yeah, and I don’t want kids and if I do want kids, I don’t need one that was made out of my sperm. There are plenty of little starving fuckers all over the world would like nothing more than to come to America and get an Ipod. I just don’t get it. Can’t people just stay cool after having a kid?
So you want to become an asshole. Go into politics or have a kid. Both are guaran-fuckin’-teed to work.