New Year's Reveloutions

I wish a healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year to all my friends.

I wish my dog could finally heal and find a food he's not allergic to.

I wish my mother luck in getting a buy-out at work so she can retire.

I wish my sister and my new brother-in-law the best of luck in trying to conceive their first child this year.

I wish that I can finally make progress in making a life for myself.

I wish the best of luck to all the men and women in the armed forces that they may get back to their families and friends safely, and that they may find peace upon their return from the horrors they have endured.

I wish everyone who feels alone can find someone who fills their heart with joy.

I wish the our country would evolve a little more and end its horrific persecution of people who are different.

I wish the President suffers a sudden, stunning moment of clarity where all the pain and suffering he has caused will suddenly become apparent to him.

I wish the people who support the President and his ideologies luck in explaining to their God how fear and hatred ruled their lives.

I wish dogmatic thinking would start to die out.

I wish that the Gods of various religions will speak directly to their disciples and reiterate to them, in no uncertain terms, that killing is wrong.

I wish people would learn to appreciate the beauty and wonder all around us.

I wish everyone on the planet, even those who are not my friends, the same healthy, happy, and prosperous new year.

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

"Why don't you wish in one hand, and shit in the other. See which one fills up first."

Hope springs eternal, Happy New Year. 

Statehood

"I'm livin' in a state of grace and it's a fucked up place..."

-House of Pain

There is no doubt in my mind that we all posess the will, and therefore, the power inherent in the theoretical state of grace. And I am no longer Catholic. And I am no more Christian than your average Tamir, Duk, or Harel. But I have seen the grace of God manifest in the lowliest of sinners, and the antithesis of God in the most revered holy man. No name, no word, no conjured sound invention can accurately capture the spirit of energy that gives man his animus, or the soul its ache for communion. And I don't mean the Eucharistic cracker of flesh or the chalice of plasma. I mean the communion that sends explorers over mountains and oceans and through vast vacuums of space. The longing for communion that charges a child to put a piece of paper in a bottle and hurl it with all his might into a roaring sea. The same striving that connects over 900 million people through a network of wire over an entire planet.

Why are we here? Here on this web page. Here on LiveJournal. Here at this computer. Here at your desk, or in the classroom, or sprawled out on your bed. Here at your friends house checking your email and the latest posts on your friends list. Why?

When was the last time you said a prayer? What was it for?

You can't really remember, because of the hundreds of prayers we may consciously say aloud in our lifetime, we don't account for the millions that flitter through our minds on behalf of the greater luminous soul that resides within. Hopes and dreams and wants and needs and smiles and tears and fears and emotions. These are all prayers to our greater consciousness. We all seek fulfillment of a need we can't even identify. Our mind is like a dousing rod searching for the lifegiving water in an infinite expanse. The water is our grace. It's the ineffable thing, the uninvented word, that compels us to be, to live, and then to move on. And our minds are too small to grasp this magical thing, this god, this soul. And while we recognize it immediately when it is before us, we can no more describe it than we can describe heaven or love or what our own births were like.

The beauty and joy of our grace is how much we don't know about it, even though we search for it every day, simply by living on and then dying. And while there is tragedy in the world, and a sense of loss each time someone leaves us behind, whether through illness, or disaster, or the horrors of war, we should always remember that the grace of the soul is still within us all, and the spirit that moves us grants us each a key to that state whenever we decide to travel there.

As long as we strive for communion we know that there is hope for humanity. 

Top two stories of the Associated Press, 11:30 pm

60 Killed, 120 Wounded in Iraq Car Blasts

then

Time selects Bush as person of the year

which begs the question:

What qualifies you for selection?

Total disregard for human life?
Irresponsible leadership?
Fascist leanings?
Idiocy? 

Frank has excellent taste

decisions, decisions

"i want us to go for a walk though the park"
a dream

nothing is forever, except perhaps love and goodbye

i've had enough experience with people coming and going in and out of my life that I shouldn't be surprised with this sudden, shocking, and deeply affecting return of her to my psyche. in fact, i expected it would happen. just not so soon. and because of this, because of the decisions i have made, i am not sure if things now in motion are a matter of pride or a side effect of loneliness. to be sure, i'm not feeling lonely. but we grow accustomed to a certain type of life.

as odd as it may seem, especially to some of the more unconventional people i know and who know me, i've never wanted anything less than a traditional, honest, caring, fulfilling, loving relationship. i am assumed to be a more renegade person than i really am, and perhaps it is my fault for presenting myself with a certain image. maybe, inevitably, i am to blame. but i never lie when asked a direct question, or about what i want from another person. in my heart, i believe in love. in my mind, i know that it isn't always as easy as i want it to be. but i will not manipulate a friendship to squeeze my needs out of it, and i will not pretend to be able to fashion a certain type of relationship out of a failed one. i am for monogamy, and trust, and dependability, but not at the expense of my heart, or anyone else's.

if two people come together, however they do, and make a go at it, and it doesn't work for both of them, sure, they can just be friends. but if it doesn't work for just ONE of them, then both are destined to suffer a greater loss. in the instances where someone says "let's just be friends" (and they really mean it) there has to be a definitive belief in the minds of both people that love was not a possibility. otherwise, one is getting exactly what they want, but the cost is payed for by the suffering of the other. it can be tricky, too, to spot those lines in this day and age. and some people don't even believe that the lines have to exist all the time. this is another area where i am not quite as unconventional as some might believe.

over this past summer, i had the privilege to spend time with two very different people. i was enamored of both, in my own way, and for different reasons. and for whatever reason, both seemed interested in something about me. of these, one was very brief, while the other lasted practically the whole season. we came together in different ways, and i have come to realize that the brief, and ultimately pain-free relationship, was with the person who was never vague or dishonest about their intentions. at first i felt a bit of anxiety about our situation, as it was not something i am accustomed to being a part of. but as time went on, i realized that my anxiety had more to do with how it would reflect on me in the eyes of others than how i really felt about myself. the other, longer relationship was the source of a great many nights of confusion and pain, and i attribute this to two things. the first was the inability of that person to be honest with me (and perhaps herself) about what was happening between us until a whole lot of time went by, and second, my reluctance to believe that person when they finally did. i lived a brief, emotional version of the "boy who cried wolf" and eventually i did not hear the cries.

i realize that any vagaries that exist between two people who may or may not love one another will, ultimately, doom their relationship. it is more a reinforcement of what i already believed than a revelation. that is why i am always painfully honest when it comes to relationships. it is a big risk, but the truth is worth it. 

i don't harbor any ill will toward either of the people i have been talking about, but i only remain in contact with one. the reason this whole post started is because i have been thinking about the other. residual feelings? synaptic effluvia sputtering around in my subconscious? who knows? i just wish that by the time i meet the right person for me i'll have silenced the wolf cries, reconciled my (inaccurate) feelings of betrayal, and healed my heart for the loving to come. 

I dare you to not cry

"I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our twenty one year olds who wanted to be what they could be.

On the eve of D-day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and father or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life.... they come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that rather than controlling terrorism his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice. He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.

Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing --- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends. A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the President who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the thirty five million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the forty percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of a chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills --- it is amazing for how many people in this country this President does not feel. But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest one percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the safety regulations for coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a- half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class. And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.

But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time. But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.

The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble. Finally the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail: How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves".

E.L. Doctorow

TR, the man, the myth, the legend

"Tin habitually broadcasts extra electrons, and those superfluous particles create a barrier against acids in the foodstuff that would otherwise corrode the can, slowly weakening it from within, the way political convictions weaken morality and religious convictions weaken the mind."

"Freedom's glare is too bright for many. They panic when any sudden gust lifts the hem of the brocade. Eyes blinking frantically, they'll cling with their last broken nail to the protective folds of social control."

"What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other people's decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude."

"not only is religion divisive and oppressive, it is also a denial of all that is devine in people; it is a suffocation of the soul."

"Art is a plexus of forces and influences that act upon the senses by means of practical yet permanently inexplicable secret links."

"But it was her manner as much as her looks that turned men's hearts into squirrel cages."

"The level of structure that people seek always is in direct ratio to the amount of chaos they have inside."

"Humanity was a function of nature. It could not, therefore, live separately from nature except in a schizophrenic crime. And it could not blind itself to the wonders of nature without mutating into something too monstrous to love."

Tom Robbins - Skinny Legs and All

sure, I haven't done one in a while

What is the geekiest part of your music collection?
Almost definitely the Xanadu soundtrack.

What is your secret guaranteed weeping movie?
No secret really, but Mr. Holland's Opus.

If you could have plastic surgery, what would you have done?
No plastic surgery, but I wouldn't mind some LASIK.

Do you have a completely irrational fear?
I am afraid of clowns, but that is completely rational because they are evil creatures spit forth from the bowels of the abyss.

What is the little physical habit that gives away your insecure moments?
I have a bit of OCD shine through, I tap all my fingers against my thumb.

Do you know anyone famous?
Hmmm, I know some second rate musicians. And a soap opera star.

Spontaneous or planned?
Spontaneous, unless it's combustion, that I always plan.

Who should play you in a movie about your life?
No one would want to watch a movie about my life anyway, so I'm gonna say Ron Jeremy.

What do you carry with you at all times?
Keys, wallet, cash, phone.

What do you miss most about being a kid?
My innocence.

Are you happy with your given name?
Yes, but people like me with one syllable last names should always have a two syllable first name.

How much money would it take to get you to give up the Internet for one year?
It wouldn't be a money issue so much as finding something else for me to do.

What color is your bedroom?
Blue

What was the last song you were listening to?
New Jack Hustler - Ice T

Have you ever been in love?
Sadly, badly, madly, and gladly.

Do you talk a lot?
I don't talk more than I should, but sometimes I say more than I should.

Do you like yourself and believe in yourself?
Too broad a question. I have things about myself that I like and things I dislike. I believe I am a good person, but I am not always sure I have what it takes.

Do transient, homeless, or starving people sometimes annoy you?
Not really.

Do you consider yourself to be a nice person?
Yes.

Which musical instrument do you wish you could play?
Guitar. Violin. Maybe the trumpet again.

Something you love and hate?
Poker.

What’s the one language you want to learn?
Spanish vs. Japanese.

What's one trait you hate in a person?
I hate the lack of personal responsiblilty in all people.

Most frivolous purchase?
Lately, football cleats. But there's at least 5 a year.

Do you consider yourself materialistic?
Not especially, I have a lot of things, but I know I can live without them.

What do you cook the best?
Breakfast.

Favorite writing tool?
G2 Gel pen.

Do you prefer to stand out or blend in?
Depends on whether you're talking about getting noticed by a beautiful woman or a sniper.

What's one car you will never buy?
Cadillac vs. Lincoln.

What kind of books do you like to read?
A healthy mix of fiction, poetry, and philosophy.

If you won the lottery?
There would be a lot of happy people around here.

Burial or cremation?
Better, there's this new thing where they freeze you with liquid nitrogen and then shatter your body with sound waves.

What's one thing you're a sore loser at?
I don't think I am, maybe I'm wrong.

If you don't like a person, how do you show it?
Generally by not having anything to do with them.

What kind of first impression do you think you give to people?
You never know just how you look through other people's eyes

Are you a giver or a taker?
A little of both. But I enjoy giving.

Favorite communication method?
Speech.

How many drinks before you're tipsy?
Four or five.

Do you have problems changing clothes in front of friends?
No, HS Football and the army puts that shit right out of you.

Last movie that inspired you?
Waking Life

Favorite cartoons: 
Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Ren and Stimpy.(great list!)

Who is your best friend?
Don't have 1. My brothers know who they are, and hopefully what they mean to me.

Any last words?
Won't know until I die.

you're the doctor, Operation!

Stainless steel and painted glass
give me a pulse like a hammer and a mind to match
No relief, no food, no sleep
When you're king for a day you're a whore for a week

--Caution

"Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once." 

--From Julius Caesar (II, ii, 32-37) 

Hamlet was my nigga!

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, 
That I, ... 
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words

wistful thinking

there is a darkness in my head
surrounding your light
it is closing in on you

soon you will be gone 

baa baa white sheep

(A) First, recommend to me:
1. a movie:
2. a book:
3. a musical artist, song, or album:
(B) Tell me your favorite episode of the Simpsons. If you don't have one stop reading my journal, go away, and never make contact with me again you cultureless human void.
(C) Ask me something you want me to be devastatingly honest about. 

"it's a beautiful beautiful beautiful day, and the sun is still shinning shinning shinning shinning over the James"

I've had a lot on my mind lately, and I think I've been using certain vices to alleviate the pressure that builds in my heart from doing exactly what I am supposed to do. There's always been this instinct, in my mind, I guess, to do the wrong thing. Not bad things, or evil things, just the opposite of the right thing. Play with my friends instead of do homework. Skate instead of study. Call out instead of go to work. Go to Canada for breakfast. Buy a guitar instead of pay off my credit cards. Get tattooed and let my insurance lapse. Fuck all, do the wrong thing. I don't really know where it came from. Most of my family is very grounded. My ancestors were all working class, blue collar folks who did their bid and made good lives for themselves and their families. In these uncertain times, I sometimes wish a bit of that had found its way into my DNA instead of this irrepressible wild streak that continues to send me astray. I'm a real "fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy" (to paraphrase Julia Roberts) and it will almost certainly guarantee me a more difficult life than I could have, should I ever decide to buckle down.

I work part time, granted, it is at two jobs, six days a week, but still... I make pretty good money, but I'm not really all that up on what it costs to actually live in the world around here. I could never afford a house, I barely have a car. My motorcycle is still in pieces. I can't afford to get my dog to the vet. I'm really a mess. Yet I've won and lost more money gambling in the last month than I make in that period of time. It's not even compulsive, I just keep having the dough to blow. Usually I win, but when I take those winnings to pay off my last bit of credit card debt, or the monthly loan payment, there's no satisfaction there. I'd rather take it to the next poker table and see what else I can make of it.
I am a damn good poker player, but I think I have to slow down. All of this may be indicators of a problem looming on the horizon.

The worst thing lately, is something else that's been dwelling on my mind since the end of the summer. Did I make the right decision regarding my relationship with Lauren? There is a great debate raging between my head and my heart. My head is the honest one, realizing that all I want from her is a romance and that anything else is gonna involve a lot of me trying to shape all our time together one way. And heartache every time I have to accept that she doesn't want that at all. Then my heart is the more quixotic one. She's a great girl, attractive, intelligent, talented. Fun to be with, and she likes me too. But it overlooks the nature of those feelings. She likes me as a friend. We tried the other thing and she decided she didn't want it. So I am relegated to second tier, relationship wise. Her reasons are valid, though they range from goofy to accurate to downright insulting. So my heart says labor on, wait her out, she's just young and afraid. My brain knows better. Leave it alone, she made up her mind, move on. Better off not mixing things up in that area. 
And there are other options...

But that's for another time.

In any case, I don't know what to do about her and I. And I'm not so sure I'm ready for the police academy, should some miracle happen and they take me. So I need to work that much harder at the gym. And I'm still very bad at being a writer, so that dream is on a respirator in the same hospital room as the musician thing, which actually has a feeding tube. And I keep getting farther and farther away from my childhood, which is a good, natural thing, but makes me sad none the less.

Let's try some extemporaneous Thanatopsis/shite.

channel 9

in a mixed media dream,
easeled on steel bones, exist
wax paper documents behind a shield of
cat's eye marbles.
the constitution of the republic of fear;
signed by each and every childish soul.

we are waiting out the floundering fathers.
expecting a sequel to an
unfinished work. whistling the tune
of a demon piper, leading us down
the mountain trail around bends of shame,
through caves littered with dead
potential.

finally reaching the bottom, we close our
eyes in a last ditch effort to ignore
the fact that every one of us loses this world.
work. word.
dying is not un-living is not burying is not loss.
living is not un-dying is not carrying on is not winning.
each is the cool side of the other's blanket.

invite no fear.

11.9.04
manic 

I am much better employed from every point of view, when I live solely for my own satisfaction, than when I begin to worry about the world. The world frightens me, and a frightened man is no good for anything. ~George Gissing

I've felt a bit of its sting before, but I've always assumed we would pull through ok. Today, however, I am not so confident. I am truly ashamed to be an American today.

awesome with an "E"

so here I am, 30 years old, singing hardcore songs and mashing it up to OpIvy when along comes this b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l day, smack dab in the middle of dreary old autumn. it's a spring day, and I'm fairly convinced it's just for me. so I drag my old bag of bones out to the field this morning and play some football with the boys. out-f'ing-standing. I still can't run, but my recovery time in between plays is one of the best on the field. I throw for one touchdown and catch another. we play for just under an hour, my team winning by one score. beautiful day marching on. I didn't escape unscathed, my knee and prolly my back are going to be screaming at me in the morning, but today was worth it.

home for breakfast. proving everything is better with bacon, I have some for my meal and the day gets even nicer. sun shinning, cool breeze blowing. all this plus the natural multi-cultural display that is the turning leaves. i wait around for the phone call so I can go bike riding, something I had agreed to pre-football. I knew I wasn't gonna make that 15 mile run from Washington's Crossing to New Hope, so I convinced the lady friend that Mercer Park would be a suitable alternative, and boy was it. Gloriousness to the left and right, more sun, more breeze, more colors. Today was the exact opposite of a sensory deprivation tank.

so we're heading home and I have a hankering for chicken, rice, stuffing, gravy. my favorite old school dinner. we are in agreement that food is of the order, so it's to the supermarket. after spending more time than one should ever spend in one store looking for gravy, we make for home with the goods. i whip up a fantastic meal. we scarf, then decide that pumpkin pie might just be the best way to finish everything up. I casually mention that for all the things they do wrong, Denny's has some kick-ass pumpkin pie. we make for bordentown and purchase a whole pie, which they spitefully give to us frozen. home again, after twenty minutes baking it is at least thawed enough to eat, so we partake of dessert.

some lounging around, a kindly back rub for yours truly, the king of new found aches and pains. she's off to study. I piddle around here. Soon it's off to shower all the remnants of the day off. Then some light reading and bed. Days like today make a man glad to be alive. Part of me wants to say it's sad to see it end, but if it didn't, how would I have my next adventure?


coda: oh, yeah. I hit all my picks, plus the GIANTS BEAT THE VIKINGS! 

I just ate about 15 Garlic Butter Ritz crackers. Wanna make out later?

The Duplex rules, yet again

take that, wholesome goodness of family circus!

little whoops and big whoops

Fidel Castro is a clumsy bastard.

Like me with my words. Understanding is so difficult to reach in this dry, sometimes wretched medium. I used to be really good with words, but I can't seem to make myself clear with them any longer. Maybe I just talk too much. Action would seem to be the thing. The remedy. But if I act and the result is bad, I just have to talk twice as much to explain myself.

I'm friggin thirty and I feel like a teenager. (whine)Nobody understands me!(/whine)

It is imperative that everyone I care about understands that no matter what I say, I don't care any less. With the exception being if you kill my dog or rob my house or some shit like that, I might say "I hate you motherfucker and if you come near me again I'm gonna pull your spine out through your ass." In which case my words haven't failed me and I actually have lost affection for you. But two different people in the last few weeks have run into situations with me where they felt either let down or downright alienated by my feeble attempts at communication. I love to communicate. Seriously, it turns me on like nothing else, but I'm just not very good at it these days. I hope not to lose people I care about because of that. I believe one of these issues was resolved, I can only wait and see how the other plays out, because there is more than mis-communication involved in that one.

In any case, I'm cool. Really. It is your pleasure to know me, because lately I've been re-evaluating my worth, and I've realized that I was using the wrong benchmark. I'm actually really awesome, but I promise not to let it go to my head. I'm just excited to have discovered it, so I had to mention it here. I'm going to listen to some Tesla now and play solitaire while waiting for my laundry. You all have a good day, it's easy enough if you let yourself. 

the future looks like mixed media, how exciting!

quote



what a cruel thing to pretend



what a cunning way to condescend



"


nice and ifless

reality check bounced

no hands to tie

sunshine and a well worn pen

"blessed sleep deep and hard, this deathlike trance I like the best.
peace and dreams and all the rest." 

you can always be the one to end up on the top...

1. Think of a word you would use to describe me.
2. Go to Google Image Search and search for that word.
3. Select the picture you see as most fitting, and post it (or link to it) as a reply. 

Girl's Best Friend

I've got a jewel 
where my third eye should be.
It's a diamond, so I can take a hard look
at everything I see.

My sights set on you,
on us, and on me.
Until I can etch our story permanently
into the tangled folds of my memory

I've got a jewel
in my skull soaked in time.
It's a diamond, so I can think very hard
about all I decide.

Each facet throws light
on thought and on knowing.
Yet I've grown more and more pale
and shown only what shadows sing.

I've got a jewel
for a heart behind bone.
It's a diamond, so I feel very hard
and quite alone.

But it's still a precious stone
to those with keen eyes.
Just look hard and think hard, what would
you do with a diamond this size? 

thinking about children...

I wonder if monsters behave the way they do because they are more afraid of the dark than we are.

Panic! Now is the time to panic!

Have the inmates taken over the asylum? Is the whole fucking world just insane? How badly has everything gone to shit?

Taken from an article in Variety which tells of new anti-piracy legislation and task-force efforts:

"The attorney general recognizes that intellectual property theft endangers our country's economic and national security, and that's why he's so supportive of this effort," said David Israelite, Ashcroft's deputy chief of staff, who spearheaded the task force.

National Security? The douchebag selling bootleg Britney Spears CDs at the farmer's market is a national security risk? The kid in Kansas who just downloaded the new Eminem single because his parents won't buy him anything with a PMRC sticker on it equated with bomb-dropping, civilian massacring terrorists?

The article goes on to say how parts of the wildly popular and ever so terrifying Patriot Act will be appropriated to help combat this heinous wave of devastating crime. No doubt (wonder if that's intellectual property theft) the ability to wire-tap and surveil anyone for any reason and the complete disregard for civil liberties will help us in this quest for a better, safer, less pirate ridden America. 

I'd rather that I died, I got too much pride

Let's Hear it for those NY Football Giants on their best start in over ten years. 
Great game boys!

 

Holy shit, that band is amazing!

Seriously, I don't think there is another band as amazing as the Black Keys. I've been a lunatic for them since the first time I saw them live and they still kick ass. I'm completely blown away. I told Mike that when I get obscenely wealthy I'm gonna hire them to play my birthday party every year.

I also got my new toy today, courtesy of the Indianapolis Colts, The New England Patriots, the NY Jets, the St. Louis Rams, and yes, even the dreaded (shudder) Philadelphia Eagles; all of whom won their respective games this past weekend in an attempt to get me a bit of money from the local sports book. If Tampa could have scored another point it would have been a perfect weekend. In any case, I got me a digital camera. The Canon PowerShot S500 to be exact. Something new to play with. And since the battery it came with was nice enough to have a bit of charge, here we go:

If they ever invent Talent Transplant surgery, I want this guy to be my donor:

Dan Auerbach

the band that saved rock and roll:

Patrick Carney and Dan

I wish I could see them again tomorrow night. But alas...
In any case, I think I'll be attending a Tegan and Sara show soon, and I'm going to see Mindy Smith this Friday. Yep, me, the same kid who routinely thrashed around like a retard in a centrifuge at hardcore shows for most of his young life, seeing chick bands. But ef it, that's what I like. Even if it won't ever compare to the amazing awesomeness that is the Black Keys. Ok, I'll shut up about them now. MOLE! Sorry. Moley moley moley. The Black Keys rule! 

Sick sucks

Well, if she hadn't left me before, she prolly would have this week anyway. I'm officially sick, and anyone who knows me knows I am a miserable fucking bastard of a man when I am under the weather. Seriously, I could make a nun want to kill me when I am sick. 
Strep throat. My tonsils were so swollen this morning that I could barely breathe. $120 later and I have some anti-biotics and a dash of hope that I will be better soon. Not having health insurance sucks.

The f'ed up part is, apart from my throat, and the whole barely able to breathe/not able to swallow thing, I feel pretty good. Emotionally I'm still sad, but I don't feel helpless or totally miserable. I had a good time at the show, work hasn't been as horrible as it was the last few weeks, and Dennis Farina is on Law & Order now. I might actually take up watching TV again on Wednesday nights. Smallville and then L&O. Hopefully Kristin can look at the apartment on Friday, I'm anxious to know if I'm gonna be moving soon or not.

The question that haunts me, as I'm sure it haunts everyone who is in my shoes, is: Will I ever find the right person? You keep trying different people out, and finding yourself in situations that are either unfamiliar or too familiar. But when is the right situation gonna come along. Timing, needs, attraction, fulfillment. Total package. It's a very big "IF" and I'm not sure that anyone can be totally secure in answering it until it's behind them. Even then, with what is going on in certain friends' lives, how can you ever be sure, or at least secure. Lonliness is a bitch, but nothing compared to betrayal or loss. Since there is no way to ever be completely sure about someone, I have to think the way I've been going about things is the right one. Learn someone, love them if and when it feels right, and risk the big hurt. I'm really no worse off for it, am I?