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.

Got me a new bitch

Listening to: Ludwig van Beethoven, Fidelio (Angel #67361, Otto Klemperer conducting)

The last few days you've heard nary a whisper from these parts though not due to the old (oh, so old) excuse that I'm weeping into my Wheaties over dreams dashed and discarded. No, my friends, I've moved on and I'm adjusting to a new love - yes, I do recover quickly - a girl who is sharing not only my bed but my tiny apartment as well as the hearts of my children. She is young (oh, very young) and can be very annoying at times but her capacity for love and affection far outweighs her character defects; anyway, she's young enough to be teachable.

Sure, she's a mutt but that only adds to her charm and since she's very good with the wee ones - loving, gentle, playful, affectionate - I am forced to keep her. Just out of a bad relationship ("catch em' on the rebound" is never a good strategy but sometimes you take what comes your way) but had I not intervened, her fate might have been much worse and who knows where she would have ended up? Yes, tell me I'm too much of a softie, I don't care, she's here with me and I love her.

Now, as I mention that she's had all her shots and her tubes are tied, most of you are clicking away from me, for good reason. For those of you (and you two or three know who you are) who are still with me, she's a collie/german shepard mix (mostly shepard looking) and she really is a sweetie, very mellow but I need to train her.

Since she's my first dog, I'm calling on my handful of readers who own dogs to enlighten me on some of the finer points of dog training. I took her for a nice long walk this morning and all she did was sniff everything. We went a half mile and she had to stop and smell every - EVERY - spot where a dog had left it's mark. Forty-five minutes to go a half mile and she didn't do her business. No, she waited until we got back here to get that done. Right in front of me. WTF is up with that?

Help me out with that and this: the previous owner named my dog "Robin". Yuck. A friend told me that the dog is young enough to get used to another name (and told me that two syllables for the name is optimal), that I should have no problem getting her to respond to commands with a new name. So contest time: whomever comes up with the coolest name for my doggy will get a copy of my 2-disk Holiday Mixmania! set for your incredible creativity. Multiple entries are allowed, if you repeat someone else's suggestion, the person who suggested it first wins out.

I'll keep the link on my sidebar, so get to naming my dog!

Ups & downs

Listening to: Skinny Puppy, The 12" Singles

Rough start today with the wee ones in no mood to hurry to get to school. Not that I'm a morning person, by any stretch of the imagination, but rising and shining is a deed left up to dad, if not done gladly, indeed done with a great deal of shouting and pushing and pulling until all the clothes are on and everyone's snapped into their carseats and ready to roll. The morning aggression of "lock and load".

Growling at my need for coffee and the slug-a-bed attitude of my kids as we roll towards the city, the tone is nothing short of surly. Then, in an instant, I check the rearview and see big eyes glimmering in the morning sun, wide and alert to the passing landscape - my anger melts away. Who could stay mad at these babes?

We get to school and I hug-and-kiss, hug-and-kiss, hug-and-kiss, pat heads and wish a "good day" and then hie me back to the house while I consider how easy it is to forget the minor irritations brought on by small children when the immensity of my love washes away everything that got my day off to a rotten start.

Would it be so easy with the rest of the world.

By the time I had my DUI group together, I was in a fairly good mood: we'd opened up with the reports of our lives over the past week, laughed, taken tonight's topic into letting the little things pass us by, by cultivating awareness of the here-and-now. As we neared the cescendo, the door clicked, and clicked, "What the fuck is that noise?"

"There's some dud sitting out in the reception area."

And indeed there he was, with a toque and a bomber jacket, looking just as annoyed as I felt, annoyed that he'd sauntered into my office and disturbed the groove.

"I was told I could get my intake done tonight," he said, "that you'd be here until 9 o'clock."

"A," I responded, "I won't be here till 9 o'clock and 'B' no one told you that you could get your intake done here."

"Yeah, they did"

"Who?"

"I dunno, some guy. The judge told me I had seven days to get enrolled and I have to have that done by tomorrow and some guy told me you'd be here until 9 o'clock."

"Well, I'm sorry if someone told you that - if anyone DID tell you that - but I have a group here and after this is done, I'm picking up my kids and going home. Besides, the court's don't accept an intake until after you've attended your first class and that isn't going to happen tonight, pal."

It wouldn't have surprised me if someone had indeed told the idiot that he could come into my office and do an intake at ninefuckingpee em but I wasn't about to accept the blame for a moron who had waited seven days - until 9 at night - to keep his sorry ass out of jail. With that kind of irresponsibility (on top of driving drunk), he deserved to be locked up.

After group, I called the main office and left a curt little message relating the experience and, if someone had told the idiot he could come in to do an intake, don't do it ever again. I have kids that I need to get home and make too little money to cover for other people's fuck ups.

I don't expect the rest of the world to be as smart as me but I do expect a modicum of competence in every day life. Apparently, that's too much to ask for. If a Department of Slap-em'-upside-the-head-and-wake-em'-the-fuck-up is ever developed, sign me on, I'll be happy to do my patriotic duty. Too many Americans sleepwalk through life.

I sent the idiot packing, sent my group home, did my notes, picked up my kids and drove them home, to put them to sleep. Tomorrow we'll have another cranky morning but I can sleep well with the knowledge that when I get my kids up in the morning that they won't be sleepwalking.

Mixmania! clarification for those intimidated by the process

Listening to: Disk I of the two disks I'm mixing

If you're thinking of signing up, GO HERE and read the rules.

Things are looking a little pathetic participant-wise considering past mixmania! extravaganzas and I don't know the reason. All I'm asking is for you to give me your favorite holiday music on a disk, something you'd pop in at a holiday party at home or work, it's that simple. I don't see why it's so intimidating.

Folks, I have some awesome disks ready to go. You'll play the first disk while the egg nog goes around (heavy on the rum, yeah) and then play the second disk while everyone's shitfaced. Not even Halloween but I'm ready to get this going.

Speaking of Halloween, here's a disk I mixed a few years back:

1. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells
   Sets the mood. If you haven't seen the movie before Halloween, SEE IT.
   
   
2. Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels - Devil With the Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly
   If People aren't dancing to this at your party, they're dead, I assure you. You don't want dead people at your party.
   
   
3. Rocky Horror - The Time Warp
   Every Halloween mix has this song on it for a reason. If you don't know the reason, you have no reason holding a Halloween party.
   
   
4. The Clovers - Love Potion #9
   Do you have a Love Potion #9 mixed up at you party? No?!? Why are you having a party?
   
   
5. Sheb Wooley - Purple People Eater
   Silly, simply silly. And redundant.
   
   
6. Classics IV - Spooky
   Do we have your attention yet? Have FUN!!!
   
   
7. Michael Jackson - Thriller
   If I have to explain this one, you really are clueless
   
   
8. DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Nightmare On My Street
   Before he went on to movies, Will Smith made disposable rap. This is an example but it fits the season.
   
   
9. Redbone - The Witch Queen of New Orleans
   Man, they sound black but they're actually native american. Scary.
   
   
10. The Buoys - Timothy
    My actual, single 'guilty pleasure' on this mix (OK, count the last cut), a tune about guys trapped in a mine and who resort to cannibalism. YUM!!!
    
    
11. Crazy World of Arthur Brown - Fire
    I don't know why this guy wasn't bigger considering Alice Cooper stole all his chops. Must have been because Alice had Zappa and Lou Reed behind him and Arthur Lee had was a heroin addiction.
    
    
12. Black Sabbath - Iron Man
    Yeah, so what, by this time everyone has had a few beers in them and you know what? They're singing along so shut up.
    
    
13. Blue Oyster Cult - Godzilla
    The giant, irradiated and dangerous prick known as Norbizness would sway you away from this song (he really is a giant penis knocking down buildings - BEWARE!) and this group but I think they rock. If anyone disagrees, offer them drambui and vicodin.
    
    
14. Van Halen - Runnin' With the Devil
    From their first, best album and if anyone at your party whines, toss them.
    
    
15. Ramones - Gimmee Gimmee Shock Treatment
    Good thing you got rid of the asshats who pissed and moaned about the last song because, really, that's what they needed.
    
    
16. The Cramps - Goo-Goo Muck
    God, I *LOVE* this song and God, why do all Cramps cuts sound like they were recorded under water?
    
    
17. KMFDM - Go To Hell
    Yeah?!? Ok.
    
    
18. Ministry - Everyday Is Halloween
    OK

Give me your mixes or STFU, children of the corn...

Bow down, ye mortals

Listening to: Assorted Artists, Down With Dixon (A Tribute to Willie Dixon)

Having dodged the bullet thus far, I'll attribute my superhuman powers of steering wide of The Sick to the fact that I have been deified:

Indeed, you are 87% erudite, 87% sensual, 54% martial, and 62% saturnine.
Amun was a mysterious God indeed. His very name basically means "what is hidden", "what is not seen", "what cannot be seen", and though even his form was said to be “unknown”, he was depicted as a man with the head of a uraeus (cobra), or a man seated on a throne and holding in one hand the sceptre, and in the other the ankh.
All secrets aside, what we do know is that Amun was the Egyptian King of the Gods, not unlike his counterparts Zeus (Greek mythology) and Odin (Norse mythology). With his ruling might over the Gods, Amun soon became associated with the Pharaohs.

Being responsible for the creation of the world, it is not surprising that he was also the God of fertility, reproduction, and sexual power, and thus also the God of agriculture. With the combined powers of regeneration and royalty, Amun became linked to the sun and the great God Ra, becoming known as Amun-Ra, which pretty much consolidated his status as Supreme God.

In spite of Amun's political ascension, he also enjoyed popularity among the common people of Egypt, who came to call him the vizier of the poor, the protector of the weak, and an upholder of justice.

You can find out what deity you are by taking this test. Thanks to Skippy for pointing me there.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

Listening to: The Replacements, Let It Be

For those of you who have emailed me your intentions to join in on the Holiday mixmania! - I haven't forgotten you - just been, um, preoccupied. I promise to get on this by the end of the week. Natalie & Shari - I swear, your disks will get mailed soon and I'm sorry - life got ahead of me

Two down, two to go.

Lilly was laid out on the couch all day with a little blue waste basket next to her, vomiting into the bucket about once an hour. Poor little thing. The process was always the same, her starting to whine, then cry, then her wretching into a bucket, a plastic echo maginfying her misery.

Zeke started this off a few days back, low-grade fever, diarrhea and then lots of vomit. Lots of it.

The doctor said to restrict solid foods and keep the kids on clear liquids. I could have sworn I told my mom this but somehow, the message was lost and she plied the hungry little guy with toaster waffles and chocolate milk. Lots of it.

On the way home from my parent's, Zeke did the whining thing, then the crying, the vomit. Lots of it.

It's about a half-hour drive from my parent's to my place and, well, what can you do? Zeke had to sit there covered in his own puke until we could get home and I could carry him in the house like a tube full of enriched uranium, strip him down and get him in the tub.

After I got the kids to bed, I carried a bucket of hot, soapy water out to the minivan, removed his carseat and went to work on the damage. It was obvious that, after almost two days of not having solid food or choclate milk, the little guy gorged himself. There must have been a half gallon of emesis puddled up in the rear bench of the minivan. Yes, lots of it.

After I had that cleaned up, I went to work on the carseat, a freakin' chinese puzzle. The seat cover was intertwined with the belts and there was no directions on how to remove it. I tried running the entire carseat under the shower head but that got old with a quickness. The Evenflo website was no help and I was forced to go at the sopping, disgusting thing with a flat-head screwdriver.

Let me tell you folks, that works.

With a clean carseat and two kids with hit with this evil bug, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. One more kid and me. Who will get the pukes next?

Place your bets now.

Yesterday we played a little and I remembered what it was like to be alive

Listening to: Ken's excellent mixes

For those of you who have emailed me your intentions to join in on the Holiday mixmania! - I haven't forgotten you - just been, um, preoccupied. The following post (and previous posts) should explain why I've been so distant.

It's not that my head has not been with this (if you made any sense of my last post, pass what you're smoking on to me) but that I've not had the heart to put anything here. With no heart for this (or much of anything, for that matter), it's felt futile to sit here and just bang out something to show this has been updated. Reminded of a passage by Carlos Castaneda,

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

Indeed.

A little bit of my heart returned yesterday, warmed in the autumnal sun and nurtured by my children. We attended Lilly's school carnival. "Balmy" afternoon is appropriate if by "balm" I mean "salve" or "succor" and an unseasonably warm breeze pushing gold leaves down the street, pushed me outside of myself, where I've needed to be, with my children and not stuck inside myself.

Children have a way of taking your pain and popping it away, like a tetherball; ready to come back and smack you back, jack.

We walked onto the playground and met Lilly's teacher at the first booth, the place where you tossed beanbags at wooden bottles and if you knocked them all over, you got a fake gold coin. Marni was instantly enamored by the gold-coin concept, apparent as it was that the currency bought things from the prize table: stuffed lime-green ducks, princess gear, touchable bubble blow-things, a gazillion goodies to be had for doing what the games demanded. Zeke just wanted to hang onto my pant-leg while Lilly was eager to indulge her teacher’s pet status.

Ms. Ferran met me and said, “Daddy, you have such a good daughter, there,” No doubt of that. Lilly spent most of the day at Ms. Ferran’s booth, setting the bottles back up, collecting bean bags, collecting trash from the playground and presenting it to her like a cat bringing the carcass of a newly killed bird and although the teacher’s pet spent a little time accumulating prizes (mostly modest trinkets, she seemed to have no interest in the larger prizes), when I looked up for her at any given moment, Ms. Ferran’s booth was the first place I checked.

In so many ways, the carnival was a long, deep breath of clear mountain air, not just because it forced me out of my head, took my focus away from the rent in my heart, but it allowed me to let my kids run free with no worries that they’d get snatched or hurt. In the confines of that playground, among other families and under the watchful eye of the faculty, I’d momentarily walked away from everything harsh and ugly and painful.

About a dozen booths were arranged mid-way fashion beyond Ms. Ferran’s pivot point, the fishing game, a penny-toss, ring-toss, Frisbee-toss, everything requiring a little dexterity, nothing so demanding that the wee ones couldn’t win a little something. The booth workers gave dispensation to the smallest children, holding them right over a target to drop the ring or beanbag then awarding a prize even when nothing was hit. Truly, a kid’s paradise.

The penny-toss involved miniature flamingo float-rings holding beer cups in a big tub of water. This was Marni’s bailiwick and her aim was exquisite, whether dropping a cold whoosh into the cup or taking a rebound off the forehead of the kid working the concession. Having found her game, Marni returned again and again, stashing her prize tokens with penurious glee. She’d been by the prize table and had decided on several stuffed animals, two or three princess ensembles, and a large velvet rose. She had her game, she was in the zone, and when the requisite prize tokens had been accumulated, she pushed her way to the front of the prize table to claim her spoils.

Zeke just wanted to fish. Unconcerned with results, unencumbered by any desire other than the desire to wave the plastic rod and reel sacerdotally over the tub of water, an ascetic’s detachment, process, ritual. Every time the magnetized hook latched into the mouth of the robotic fish and he was offered a prize token for the catch, Zeke ignored the prize, preferring to drop the toy hook back into the tub with no other intent than to wave the rod around again.

The old man watching the concession was amused. As children lined up impatiently for their turn, the old man leaned his ancient shoulders towards me, “That boy’s a natural born fisherman!”

“I guess,” me, kind of mumbling, “I only fish to read and smoke a cigar.”

My sarcasm was lost on him and his frame snapped back towards my son, the serious angler. Having no patience for a dilettante like me, not appreciative of my son’s inborn inclination to fish.

Not appreciative? I relished the entire day.

OK, I'm over this, I swear, test me, if you can and put a cigarette out on my scrotum

Listenig to: Brian Wilson, Smile^

So over this.

Having hammered my self-esteem into tiny, unrecognizable pieces and then ground those pieces with a morter & pestal, I've tum-tummed everything into a fine powder, fine enough to snort in such a way that pain of bringing it into me is ten times less than the effect. Woot,

whoosh,

do it again.

In the aftermath, why not? Repeat that whack in the face, expect different results, and whistle loud, whoo-hoo, tweeeeeet. Do it again. Whoo-hoo, tweeeeeet.

Ground Zero minus me and square one equals too tired

Listening to: Lost's SUPERB Mix

How does one start when one has nothing to say other than, frankly, one has nothing to say?

This blog has remained a big blank space for the past week for no other reason than the well's been dry, devoid of original thought or anything even passably interesting.

In the spirit of the season, I submit my hobgoblins to you, for your consideration, and trust such beasties scare up something more than the small-minded foolish consistency that my readers have come to expect. Not meaning to creep up on ya' and go "boo" but it's about all I have at the moment.

Arise zombie: speak and eat some brains.

This past week passed in a pissed off blast of Indian Summer. Cold in the morning, hot as catshit in a pan in the afternoon. "Fall, fall, for fuck's sake FALL," I kept chanting.

Fall arrived today. Finally. Even some snow tonight. As, I said, the Zombie speaks.

Hollow as I am, a husk of what I was, bone dry and crypt cold, I welcome the turn of the planet towards chill. Blow away the wisp of what I was, I'm so over that.

Delapsus Resurgam, When I fall, I shall rise. Everything that falls is renewed as something else, different, maybe better.

Maybe. It's nice to believe that, anyway. At Ground Zero it feels good to believe in something.

Semi-domesticity in the shadow of St. Louis, a previous love, and shit-stain spammers

Listening to: The Smiths, Louder Than Bombs

As the magically hip are aware, I'm visiting with my love, swamped with humidity I'm not accustomed to, a pilgrim shot back eastward into the arms of someone greater than the sum of me and certainly better than anything I deserve.

Those who know say that I have "better things to do" and aren't expecting me to post, at least not this weekend ask why, WHY would I be here, here, chatting this thing up? Why not entwined amongst my fair lady's thighs and rutting like a rabid ferret, shredding the mattress into little clouds to pass through the room with precipitation promised, mmmmmm yes, why indeed? Except that she has things to read and write and fill out for this her third year of college, there's no other reason but that I'm bored.

Hearing old poetry and journal entries of hers, CDs that mean something, trying to figure out what she'll write next, I'm in the shadow of something that I that I can't just blow away with a puff from my lips. Sitting here in Illinois, figuring out something to do now while she figures out her future a few weeks down the road, I realize there's a bigger legacy to contend with than I'd considered. A legacy so big, I wonder if I will ever overcome the shadow that seems to darken every inch of continent I try and inhabit.

In the meantime, I'm checking my email to see if anyone has commented on my previous posts and find that I'm finally a victim of comment spamming. There's bigger things to turn in my sphere and I also have to deal with fly shit who have nothing better to do than shill their worthless product on my blog? If I had a gun and a target to plug, these spammers would have gray-matter spread across the mounds of garbage that spawned them.

Lu's neighbors saw me smoking on the porch and invited us over to celebrate another human brought into this mess. Not something Lu was up for but I went ahead and crossed the street to shoot the shit and drink with them, no matter how inconsequential my presence would be, excused Lu with her mass of homework (which, indeed, she had to do). They were good folks, loud, drunk, fun, welcoming of a Colorado alien in their midst and generous with their food and booze.

Still, I wonder if, given the chance to transcend their circumstances, they'd take the opportunity to spam blog accounts, emails, shoot shit into people's private lives for the sake of a few more bucks. In the hour or so I spent with them, I got the sense that every single one of them would have taken the opportunity to spread that shadow a bit further, for a few more shekels, for another trip to Mazatlan.

Listening to The Smiths, I get the sense that shadow is part of the landscape, here. It's up to me to see something else, make something else and if I can, I will. If not here, than somewhere else, I guess. But she's here and this is the place where I need to get it done. Now. Tonight.

If not now, then never.

Tagged again

Listening to: Punk/New Wave mix I'm making for Kaleigh

You have until November 1 to sign up for the extended SUPER-DUPER Holiday Mixmania! - enough time to plan your stocking full of coal.

Listen: I'm making the *hsssshhhhhhh* sound bloggers make when they've been tagged for a meme, a breath of ether between "sheesh, what a hassle" and "Ain't I special?!?!"

Trusty shot this one my way and I'll shoot it out like a spit shot:

1. Do you try to look hot when you go to the grocery store just in case someone recognizes you from your blog?
   
   I never try to look "hot" - I prefer to look COOL. However, the chances of anyone recognizing me from my blog are about as remote as me becoming the next FEMA Director. Oh wait a minute, my taking over FEMA isn't that far-fetched after all and as the father of three young children, I'm probably more qualified at handling disasters than that bozo whining before congress.
   
   
2. Are the photos you post Photoshopped or otherwise altered?
   
   Not at all. My psychedelic aura was developed after years of Lysergic excess. When I die, I intend to be cremated... slowly, wrapped in huge sheets of rolling papers and passed around to be puffed on by all attendees of my wake.
   
   
3. Do you like it when creeps or dorks email you?
   
   Being a creep and a dork, I find such emails redundant, really.
   
   
4. Do you lie in your blog?
   
   Often. It's like a bed of clover, only with a more pungent aroma than the usual sheep shit scent.
   
   
5. Are you passive-aggressive in your blog?
   
   Often. It's like a bed of clover...doo-dah.
   
   Hey, is this like that Chinese fortune-cookie game where you add "In bed" after the fortune? So the question is, "Are you passive-aggressive in your blog - in bed?" No? Well, that's how I'm playong it...
   
   
6. Do you ever threaten to quit writing so people will tell you not to stop?
   
   Yeah and it's as effective as my threats to quit smoking.
   
   
7. Are you in therapy? If not, should you be? If so, is it helping?
   
   Maybe I should be in therapy - ask my clients.
   
   
8. Do you delete mean comments? Do you fake nice ones?
   
   I've only deleted stupid comments. I've never faked a nice one but I'm told my partners fake nice ones all the time :((
   
   
9. Have you ever rubbed one out while reading a blog? How about after?
   
   Why rub out the comment when you can rub out the commenter?
   
   
10. If your readers knew you in person, would they like you more or like you less?
    
    I'm pretty sure they'd like me, more or less. Mostly less.
    
    
11. Do you have a job?
    
    If you mean, "Do I have to go somewhere everyday, do something that I get paid for and then give some of that money to the government," then no, I don't have a job. On the other hand, if you mean, "Do I have to go somewhere everyday, do something that I get paid for but don't give jack shit to the government," yeah, I have one of THOSE.
    
    
12. If someone offered you a decent salary to blog full-time without restrictions, would you do it?
    
    "Without restrictions?" Meaning I could do it while sitting nude in a store front window? HELL YEAH!!!
    
    
13. Which blogger do you want to meet in real life?
    
    All kidding aside (and assuming I met Trusty due to his passing this meme on to me), Mamacita, Grace, Vicki, and Sterfish.
    
    
14. Which bloggers have you made out with?
    
    This Saucy Wench is all I'm admitting to...
    
    
15. Do you usually act like you have more money or less money than you really have?
    
    On my blog, less. In a bar, much, much more.
    
    
16. Does your family read your blog?
    
    I told my family that I call my blog "The Zero Boss" and they read that. When they ask about the details not exactly being congruent, I scream "It's just a goddamn blog!", storm out of the room and slam the door.
    
    
17. How old is your blog?
    
    Old enough to be moldy and stale, eh?
    
    
18. Do you get more than 1000 page views per day? Do you care?
    
    I'd care if I was getting 1000 page views because then I'd expect the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to be immediately thundering through my living room.
    
    
19. Do you have another secret blog in which you write about being depressed, slutty, or a liar?
    
    Maybe if I wasn't so busy sleeping all day - with multitudes of anonymous partners - I'd have time to write that "secret blog".
    
    
20. Have you ever given another blogger money for his/her writing?
    
    If you think anyone is paying for this crap, email me. We have a proposition to discuss.
    
    
21. Do you report the money you earn from your blog on your taxes?
    
    Just the money I get from writing erotic blog posts.
    
    
22. Is blogging narcissistic?
    
    Only if you do it well.
    
    
23. Do you feel guilty when you don't post for a long time?
    
    No, because I do it so well (per above comment).
    
    
24. Do you like John Mayer?
    
    Not as much as I like John Mayall. Not even close.
    
    
25. Do you have enemies?
    
    Plenty but none that I'll dignify with mention here.
    
    
26. Are you lonely?
    
    Yes, but only in a strict existentialist sense.
    
    
27. Why bother?
    
    I don't.

If I pass this on, it's to those I'd like to meet.

OK, I feel guilty for not posting is so long....

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep...

Listening to: Renata Tebaldi, Vol. 1

If you have yet not read my love's wonderful paean to Lilly, please go there and then return for my ceaseless babble. Go on, scoot, I'll be here... *sheesh!*

In the midst of the madness that is the autumnal equinox, My Bright, Shining Light missed out in a big way on which should have been her big day - her seventh birthday. Delivering children to school, facilitating a DUI therapy group, dropping my brood off at childcare while I worked and then picking them up to go home just in time to read them a story and put them to bed - there was no time to celebrate her, how much I love her, how much she means to me.

We had to wait until the weekend to break out the cake and the balloons and the midgets for pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and busting up the piñata and squirting silly string over the patio furniture. Even then, I could only stay a little while before I had to run off to stand in front of a dozen drunk drivers and tsk-tsk their sorry asses.

Daddy bought her a last minute gift from the Discovery store a Mellow Moodscapes Projector, which she apparently loves - she told me "It's my favorite-est gift!" I don't doubt her sincerity - she has, after all, gone to bed with it every night - and I know she relishes the thought of camping out on a rainforest floor, looking up through the canopy and listening to animals chattering away in the trees. Still, it seems so little to give her considering all that she has given me, all that she gives to her little brother and sister, all that she gives to everyone she touches.

Hours after she was born, I went and bought a journal to begin recording my thoughts for her, chronicling the world as it was that day and where we stood in relation to everything around us. I still make entries (I'm up to Vol. 3) but most of my writing for the kids ends up here (the other two also have journals... another story, that). One of these days I need to make copies (paper and disk) of my writing here to include in their journals. I want them to know my voice as a younger man, not the scold they will know when they are 18 when I hand them those journals, and my writing on this blog is as vital and immediate as anything I've put down in the diaries I keep for them.

To Lilly, my Bright, Shining Light, there is nothing I could write that could express the full breadth of how much I love you.
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Today, Noble would have been 8-years old. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this.
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Trusty, answering your meme in my next post, I promise (and you'll know why I evoked Frost for this post).