Phlegmatic

Listening to: Al Green, Call Me

I wrote this (well, kind of threw it together) the other night when I was up late and energetic, having one of those moments where I’d slept away the day trying to get over a cold and found myself having far too much energy for how I was feeling. Unfortunately, life got ahead of me and this fell by the wayside. Hope it’s much a criminal waste of time for you as it was for me.

Hopped up on Sudafed and green tea (with tons of sugar), I feel like there’s something else to do besides watching The Revenge of the Sith for the sith time and that would be sharing my boredom with the rest of you. You’ve been adequately warned then and if you haven’t clicked away yet, you have no one but yourself to blame. Don’t come rapping at my door with pieces of your skull in hand and your brain a smoking, smoldering cinder, there’s no room at the inn up in here. Especially for folks who don’t know a red flag when it’s slapping ya’ silly.

In the midst of this antihistamine buzz, I’ve been checking in with lovelies on my blog roll and one of the loveliest, Anne of Cooking With Anne, picked me for a meme that I’m just now getting around to answering.

List 5 things people may not know about you and tag 5 people to do the same.

1. I’m a pretty fair artist, meaning I can draw well. In fact, until my late teens, I thought I’d go into art school. However, it was clear to me that although I was a fair, illustrator, I’d never be an artist.
2. I was a bed-wetter until I was into my 13th year.
3. From my late teens until my early 20’s, I thought I was bisexual, meaning I had sex with other guys as well as girls. In retrospect, it had more to do with me being fully immersed in the punk lifestyle and thinking bisexuality was the ultimate punk pose. Plus, at that age, I’d fuck anything that didn’t run. I finally gave it up when I realized that every time I was with a guy, I wished he was a girl.
4. I am 1/16th Blackfeet Indian.
5. I have more than a passing interest in quantum physics.

Now, the 5 people I’d really like to answer this:

Mamacita
Trusty
Melina
Grace
Hank

Panthergirl had this meme up on her blog and although I've seen it before, I decided to answer it this time because of it's numeric allusion to Robert Anton Wilson and "The Law of Fives":

1. Go into your archives.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Post the fifth sentence (or closest to it).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five other people to do the same thing.

Which brings me to:

"As a bonus, Grace Davis popped in to say more nice things about me."

You can do the math if you doubt me (and have waaaaaaay too much time on your hands) but I'm certain my 23rd post* is me thanking the Academy for nominating me for a BoB, something I doubt will happen again since everyone's wised up to my essential, royal assholery. Anyway, Grace had done a follow up on my nomination, speaking highly of me and proving once again the axiom that, love by Grace is The Kiss of Death.

The same five people can answer that meme, too.

I was almost loopy enough to list 3 bloggers I’d sleep with but reality got the best of me and I’m holding my cards close to the vest. You’ll just have to guess who they are but I will tell you that I wouldn’t list anyone who was married just because I’m that kinda’ guy.

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* Minus 4/5 of the Noble posts, which were back-dated.

Sick, sick, sick and just getting sicker

Listening to: MC 900 Ft. Jesus, Hell With the Lid Off

You get a bonus post, for what it’s worth, because I’m down and out with the season’s first dose of coma-inducing crud (hmmm, a good description of my blog!), body aches, chills, and a respiratory system packed with fluorescent-green jelly. Yum. This nasty bug prevented me from attending a 3-day seminar in Denver and so here I am, exposing you to my pasty, pale visage and my purple prose.

If you think that’s sick, I submit to you something that’s much sicker, the meanderings of the oxygen deprived Vox Day:

I have to confess that I don’t understand this ceaseless quest for victimhood. Being raped doesn’t confer some mystical moral superiority on a woman, it just makes her a victim. And unfortunately, in all too many cases, it just makes her a stupid one.
I’m just curious what basis the moral relativists have for condemning rape in the first place. If I deem the slaking of my desire for lust - or violence, if you prefer that theory of rape - to be an intrinsic good, who are you to condemn it? Certainly, one could argue that it is a violation of private property rights, but then, what of those moral relativists who reject the notion of private property. If all property is held in common, then how can a woman object if I decide to make use of that which belongs to me?

My own take on this pathetic, pinched turd of a man is that he is over-reaching in his attempt at irony. Neo-conservatives have gotten a lot of mileage from irony the past few years but it’s a limited commodity, with limited effect. The more irony is used, the more it loses its sheen and the tendency is to turn up the volume to give it more punch, to make it seem edgier, more subversive.

It’s difficult for me to believe a thinking adult (so-called) could actually advocate this tripe and so I say he’s just acted up, like some snotty little adolescent trying desperately to get some attention.

However, if he is indeed serious and stupid enough to test his little proposition, he’ll find out just how wrong he is. Whatever intellectual footwork he tries in prison won’t fly; convicts are convinced of the evil of rape and have a particularly savage way of expressing their disgust for rapists. If Vox Day thinks he can equivocate the evil of rape, God help him if he decides to try it out. He’ll change his tune during his first prison shower.

What’s more disgusting is that Elliott Wave International continues to advertise on Vox’s shitty little blog. One would think it would work against its business plan to give the impression that Elliott Wave International condones rape but there you have it. You may want to drop Elliott Wave International an email (as I have) and ask why they believe it’s good for business to advertise on a blog that advocates rape. You’d think a company would be a little more circumspect about where its name is associated but then, maybe rape is what Elliott Wave International is all about. If that’s the case, there should be quite a party in the pokey.

(A nod to Jill at Feministe for the heads up on this horseshit)
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Mixamania! participants: emails are going out this evening, please have your disks in the mail by December 10 - thanks!

Tony's, it's been awhile

Listening to: The Germs, Like This in Hell

It had been awhile since I pulled into Tony's. Downtown hipsters just don't do it for me, the Elvis haircuts and dykes flaunting their fun; it all seems posed. But I needed a beer and there was Tony's, flagrant, thighs spread wide.

I entered, reluctant but desperate. I'd been in there before but the experience had always been empty. Effective, sure, but otherwise cheap and tawdry.

That's how desperate I was.

It didn't take me long to regret what I was doing. Oh yeah, it felt good but was I cheapening myself?

The blonde, blue-eyed sorority girl from the way-too-expensive liberal arts college asked for an obscure shot. Old folks just want whiskey. Only the young, insouciant children of privilege order shit like, "Tinkerbelle" (Absolut, Rumplemintz, and Drambui).

OK, I used Tony's and Tony's used me. So sue me, I'm single.

Self-absorption spent in Saturday night suckitude

Listening to: Dr. Dre, The Chronic

Self-absorbed.

Stuck in my craw, unable to shake it loose and let it go. I guess because, on the one hand, I know that I'm all that (so to speak) and on the other hand, all that what I am is just that, only that. Anything else betrays me, denies the energy that drives this pen, these electrons configured into something worth reading.

This is where I expose my ass, hair, warts and all. Stroking my ego so that it splooges right here on your screen.

As usual.

I do this because there's a sneaking suspicion in me that the few readers I have keep coming back because whatever I say, I say well. No one's coming here for the kid quips or the dog anecdotes but for the long-shot chance that I'll actually speak in way that's unique in this little corner of the blogosphere.

And if what I've just said has some toehold in reality, then you kinda' know that how I do who is who I am. I yam what I yam yeah, but that's not all.

My craw holds more than just snapshots of the obvious and its grit and grind. There's no pearls here but a pull, a pull more toxic than last post's issue, a pull downwards that not just invites a peek but permanence.

Sometimes seeking the depths because the life forms that dwell there are more interesting than those living closer to the light. What skims along the surface or resides just beneath take on a sheen of the everyday, a patina burnished by rubbing aginst everything seething and wriggling, everything moving towards a single point of referrence, unity displacing individuality until everything is a singular motion, a field of color moving stage right. In the depths, isolated from light, unity disappears, everything disappears; colors, when exposed, are warnings, not invitations. What's offered in the depths is boundless opportunity offset by the broader probablity of being eaten whole. Bones and all. Any trace of existance obscured in the black mud at the bottom, an equivocation of everything.

Sometimes sinking there because compulsion calls, cajoles, demands, draws me down on a leash and pins my head to the floor with a spiked heel, bids my captive heart to howl like a dog until I meet my needs. There, then, the choice is nullified, the reprieve of light lost and inconsequential, an errant ping dissapated in the shadows. All there is is desire, stripped of pretense and inhibition, naked hunger shaking uncontrollably in the cold, black void screaming for satisfaction. Or release.

And yet, in the depths, I'm no monster. I provide love and other things; I awake in the moment and I'm there for others, my kids. So, in the depths I can hold my oxygen, breathe deep, take an objective look up into the glow above me. See what needs to be done in the midst of chaos and still groove in the deepness.

Then I swim to the surface, shake my head, and take in a breath that feels like my first.

Bittersweet Symphony (Coda)

Listening to: The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

I headed west out of DIA – Denver International Airport - on my way home from dropping off my Thanksgiving guest, listening to the motor hum, lost in the quiet, no thoughts other than making my way towards the mountains in the distance, a serrated hem of smoky blue and gray. The day after Thanksgiving and the traffic was heavy, cars that had been lined up two deep at departures and arrivals were on the road, speeding towards Denver.

Stopping at the rip-off Conoco ($.50 a gallon more than in town!), I needed to piss, have a smoke. I lit up and looked out over the plains, thinking it looked less like Colorado and more like the wind-swept, grassy steppes of central Asia, my chin thrust into the breeze with the defiance of a Khazak nomad. Cars sped by on the highway below, people pumped gas and bought candy bars and energy drinks and yet I felt completely isolated, alone on the plains, pensive, taciturn. There was still another 75 miles to drive but my thoughts were lodged in the past, how I’d arrived there, overlooking hills brown with dead grass.

Six days previous, we’d driven by here, oblivious to the landscape, looking towards the road home, some small voice telling us both that this was our last visit. The visit was pleasant, heavenly at times but the specter of finality seemed to vibrate just below the surface. Things unsaid came to life in the day-to-day details of who we are and how we conducted ourselves.

In the drive to the airport, the unspoken heartbreak was finally given a voice. She said I’m self-absorbed, that she saw herself taking the lion’s share of the child-rearing if we were a couple. There is no doubt I’m self-absorbed, I conceded, although I took offense that my children were left wanting because of that. An impasse, I felt, we would never agree on this. All we would agree upon was that there was no use pursuing something that had little common ground, something doomed and mercurial.

The hills were bathed in an amber glow as I crushed out my cigarette butt and walked back to my car. Time to move on, to get back on the road and return home, to my life, to see what other roads there are.

So many roads to follow.

Heads up

Listening to: The Replacements, All For Nothing, Nothing For All

Yee haw. Look at the time of this post and know, we're having a real good time. Drinking this year's Beaujolais Nouveau, listening to The Replacements and gossiping about our blogger friends. We're done with Vicki's Annie Dillard pose and Mamacita's terrible taste in bloggers; we're disappointed with Trusty's deliberate discretion and Ellison's inability to send his feast our way (the dude can cook!). We're frustrated with Cinnabar for not updating her incredibly well-written blog and Coffee-breath for lurking and not commenting (chickenshit - not commenting on a train wreck when it's inevitable!).

Obviously, this year's Beaujolais Nouveau is THE SHIT. Especially since my company (an admittedly 'cheap date') is not only hanging with this but adding editorial content. Not just adding editorial content but indeed asking "What blogger would you most likely sleep with?" This is a silly and pointless conversation at damn near 4 in the morning and we realize most of you wouldn't be up at this hour, drinking killer wine but still, if you have the inclination to list the 3 bloggers you'd get it on with, we'd love to know.

What else do you expect from two juicers at 4 in the goddamn AM? As the Dead Kennedy's said, "Too Drunk To Fuck".

The mudman arises and motivates for Holiday Mixmania! so that Santa will treat him right

Listening to: My Disk #1 for this fiasco

Someone said that I'm not one of those bloggers who throws up a post when I have nothing to say just for the sake of putting up an update. Not sure I ever have anything to say (with few exceptions) really but I appreciate the compliment. So, if you've wondered about the dearth of posts here lately, it's because I haven't been inclined to let you know about the goo I've extracted from my toenails.

Yhe few of you who have decided to participate in the Super-Duper Holdiay Mixmania! Extravaganza may have been checking in here to see what's up wit' dat' (and wondering when I'll pull my head out of my ass). So, listen up, children, here's the latest update as we get closer to the culmination of a brand new clusterfuck.

So far I have these people in the mix (mouse over the names):

Matthew Dykstra
Ben
Easy
Hank
Kathy
Evil Mommy
Nat
Shari
Chuck
Sterfish
Melody
Deb
Kimberly
Lu
Mamacita

If you're not on this list and you think you should be, email me before Saturday, November 26 (the day I'm going to mix every body with their match and email those matches) - be sure to include your postal address, URL, and a list of all the bad things you've done this year.

One last thing: it was suggested that I back the deadline up to December 10, that it would be better if people got their mix a little early. I know this is backing it from December 15 but I agree... if you're a little late, expect some coal in your stocking. Oh, and I mean December 10, 2005 not 2006, fool.

Yeah, you can see who Santa's gonna' be skipping this year....

You get what you ask for

Listening to: The Cure, Pornography

This is November, I know. The leaves are now all brown and tattered, not the golden Hallmark cards of October but a scattershot through the breeze like flecks of dead skin from a desiccated corpse, spilling in through the doorway and littering the carpet, the dandruff of a season passed on. Whatever bits remain swirl on a wind that slices to the marrow and fills the cleft with ice, collecting into cryptograms, anagrams, put the pieces all together and it all spells “you’re screwed”. I know November is not a nice month but by God, winter’s here way too early.

I’m not ready for this, really, not ready for this at all. Call me a drunken optimist but I was hoping that summer would kind of linger well into February, throw some snowflakes into mounds that my kids could sled though and then disappear, drip down the window effortlessly without having to be scraped and slapped against studded tires. Then everything would be green again, full of life and most importantly, warm.

Living here in Colorado, I should be geared up for the season, to welcome the opportunity to slide down a hillside on pieces of wood but I’m not. And to hell with you who say, “Oh, appreciate the change of the seasons, blah dee da blah dee da blah blah blah blah.”

You’re fat, OK, I’m skinny; there’s nothing to gird me against the cold. You can take your mesomorphic fat ass and ski to hell. All winter long, all I can do is throw on the layers and wish for spring. You can stick your finger in my face and remind of what I’m missing out on but you know what?

When summer rolls around, I’ll still be skinny.

Doggie pics

Listening to: The Doors, LA Woman

For all you malcontents who insisted on having a pic to name my dog, here you are:


And another:

So yeah, she's a beautiful puppy (notice the first pic put her in perspective - my ugly ass makes her GLOW!), so keep it up with the names. You'll win my 2-disk Holiday mixmania! set, guaranteed to get dogs howlin' in your neighborhood.
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BTW, I'll take names until the 15th for the Super-Duper Holiday mixmania! and after that, you're SOL, aight?

I am Sofa King, Wechaw Jed.

Listening to: Morcheeba, Big Calm

Vacation time in early November; not to the Caribbean but up to the mountains, to stay in a friend’s remote cabin, just myself and Joseph Heller, Gustave Flaubert, and cheap bottle of shiraz, no phone, no internet, no noise other than the crackle of a fire and the soft flop of snow falling from tree branches.

Colorful drinks with fruit on plastic swords? Sweaty folds of flesh beneath Aloha shirts? Drunken spastics on a disco floor or painted shells strung on fishing line? That’s not a vacation, that’s an expensive trip to a bored Dominatrix. Finding myself miles from the nearest bleep or blip bubbling beneath the skin of society, isolated from the soul-hammering yammer of media nitwits - that’s my escape.

Driving into the mountains on Friday, I hit heavy snowfall, serious November flakes the size of maple leaves streaking past the windshield like a leap into hyperspace, leaving this galaxy and entering the frontier of darkness. Mahler’s Symphony #1 for the soundtrack, first movement perfect for venturing through the slipstream, each measure bringing me closer to revealing the mystery around the next corner which merely hints at the unknown beyond. As my tires crunched into the newfallen snow in front of the cabin, Mahler brought the final movement to crescendo, carrying me inside and the rest of everything out beyond the hills, to lie in state until my return.

The cabin was dark, darker than the snowfields outside, cold and forbidding. My fingers traced the letter of the nameplate over the door, “Hotel Sophia” to seek out the key and find out where I’d spend the next few days. The lock unlatched and I entered into a Spartan room, two bunks, a couch, a kitchen and fireplace. Unhinging the flue, I immediately went to work on a fire, the flames that would be my only live company over the next few days.

The snow still fell Saturday, fast and hard, bending boughs and burying any hint that I’d just rolled in the night before. If a bear tore me limb from limb, no one would know until the ski season started. Well enough; it’s what I wanted.

And enough to bring me here, to state this, to say, “I got away and what did you get?” Not to rub your nose in it (though I will, God knows) but just to ask if you’ll likewise take a moment to step out of the lines and breathe deep, really deep. One, two, three, take a moment and forget who we are, why we’re here and consider what really matters. That’s enough, isn’t it?

Sure seemed that way as I drove back home. Dousing the flames of the fire, closing up the flue, and carrying the ashes to be interned in the yard outside was the hardest thing I’ve done in awhile. I hated to leave, to have to re-enter this universe and return to all I’d forgotten for the past few days and nights. Driving back home, blinded by the sunlight bounced off by the snow, dealing with sheep shot through the chute into this eternal shithole, I wondered: is this all there is?

And thinking back on my weekend of sheer solitude I realized, no, there is so much more. A weekend without TV and internet and phone and chatter is what I needed to remember that yes, there is so much more. When a client said he’d spent his weekend watching football, I just nodded, good; I wasted my time as well. Sofa King Wechaw Jed.

If you haven't taken the time to get wechaw jed, you'll die with an empty skull. Count on it.