Sayonara Aught Five

Well y'all, this is the last posting for me for the year '05. I'm taking a couple days off and will not be using a computer. I wanted to write something semi-momentous, but nothing was forthcoming. So here are some New Year's resolutions that I plan to make:

To finally take that pile of clothes to the dry cleaners
To play Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2 and Super Mario Brothers 3 back to back while listening to Star Wars DVD commentaries
To have more phone calls where I use a voice much like Little Richard singing
To celebrate Coming of Age Day, a holiday in Japan (January 9th)
To "pogo" during an overwrought singer/songwriter's solo acoustic set
To attempt to shoot lasers out of my eyes
To learn to tie a Sheep's Shank
To cut down on the almond butter and up the pistachio pudding
To start using lip plumper lip gloss

Thanks everyone for helping make this an enjoyable year - y'all be safe out there. I worry.

Head Gear Blues

My friend Mike lived near me when I was a child, he had part of The Pond in his yard. He had this dog, whose name I don’t remember, but it looked like the dog from Down and Out in Beverly Hills.

When Mike’s family would go on vacation, or away for the weekend, I took care of the dog (and fed Mike’s chickens). The dog and I were tight, we were buds. She was a little moody, but comfortable with me.

Around this time I had braces. And not just braces, oh no, I also had head gear. Head gear involved this medieval contraption that looked like a bent wire hanger that got shoved in your mouth and was further yanked on by an elastic band around the neck and a harness over your head. Classy…

I once went to Mike’s house having to wear my head gear. This confused the holy hell out of the dog. The dog, much as I was, was frightened by this horror of wires and straps in and around my head. It was this crazy dazzle camouflage that kept doggy from seeing it was really me under all of that. The dog started growling at me and I was trying to calm it down with my best soothing voice.

Laura, Mike’s sister, thought this was hi-fucking-larious. Laughing, fit to pee, she cried out, “go get him!” To which the dog did…

This dog lunged and attached its jaws to the head gear sticking bare centimeters away from my face. I’d like to think that I handled this in style; that I laughed it off, chuckling smugly while a medium sized dog hung, snarling, from my face.

But I did not. I screamed like a person who has a dog attempting to eat their head.

The dog was removed, the head gear was removed, and all was made right again between the parties involved. Except for me and the sister, I slapped that bitch silly…

And as this year draws to a close, I am going to throw out an incredibly convoluted tangent:

Down and Out in Beverly Hills was based on a film called Boudu Saved From Drowning by Jean Renoir. Jean Renoir is a fantastic film maker whose credits include Grande Illusion, which many critics agree is one of the best films made. My personal recommendation for your foreign film evening is Rules of the Game by Mssr. Renoir, just excellent.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: Back In Black by AC/DC

Three Five

The numbers keep getting larger, which is a good thing in that it means I'm still kicking, but it gets a little daunting.

It's getting difficult not to use these nice, big, monumental numbers as some sort of ruler to measure where I should be in my life.

Am I where I assumed I would be years ago? No, but I can say that about so many things that have happened in my time here; most of them positive, most of them surprises.

That's what makes life an adventure, an extended and wonderous Coltrane solo; you know the outcome, but you have no idea how the fuck your gonna get there.

Snow Day #4

There was an area near our house that was known as the pond. It was an expanse of grass with little islands of trees for part of the year, but slowly it would fill with water and become a full fledged pond. Frogs would hang out and we would find big sacks of frog eggs that would become tadpoles. And in the winter, if the water had hung out long enough, the pond would freeze over.

This was something that we always looked forward to, the ice on the pond. There would be apprehensive steps onto the gray ice at the edge in the beginning; testing its thickness, listening closely for the tell tale sounds of cracking. After that first brave soul (which was frankly rarely me) trekked their way across the pond, wintertime ice festivities began.

There were attempts at ice skating, but mostly the pond just became this large expanse to slide across after running down the snowy slope towards it.

One winter we were shoe skating out there, just running and then sliding across the ice. I was about thirty yards away from the edge when I had come to a stop and began to hear that faint sound, like branches snapping. I realized a little too late what was happening, and as that now horrifying snapping sound grew louder I started to charge for the shore. I got about a foot and a half before everything gave out from underneath me and I went into the water.

Luckily, the water had gone down before it froze over, so I was only in it up to my chest, and not fully submerged and doing some sort of claustrophobic freak out under the ice.

You don't feel that water at first, like your body simply doesn't believe what has happened - and so it doesn't exist. But that ice covered water is stronger than that sort of stupid parlor trick and quickly punches into you with knives. You cannot breathe, it's as if the cold has completely seized up your body, and even as you start to panic and attempt to thrash your way out of the situation, you are still simply not breathing.

I started clawing at the ice, trying to climb back up onto it and out of the water, which seemed to have developed black, gripping hands, but the ice just kept breaking wherever I would place my weight. The whole thing became like a bad Scooby Doo routine. I thrashed all the way back to shore, breaking ice in front of me until I was finally out.

The other kids, my brother included, were laughing at me now knowing that I was going to live. And I would have laughed out of relief along with them except for the fact that it was still hard to breath. And being out of the icy water was even colder than being inside it. I began to shake uncontrollably, but luckily I was close to home. I borrowed Tony's coat and shambled home for a hot shower, some hot chocolate and a surreptitious pull from mom and dad's Peppermint Schnapps bottle.

That was the end of that year's winter pond festivities, but I was back out there next year, only listening REALLY hard this go round and keeping an eye on the quickest way back to shore.

Repent! Repent!

Okay, little background, The Pixies are about my favorite band ever. From the first time I heard them, they stuck those jagged teeth into me and I've never let them release.

I did get to see them live 3 times before the breakup, but I have friends who became rabid fans after the end and never got to see them. One of the reasons (a minor one in retrospect, but what the fuck) that Greta and I collided so hard in the beginning was over a mutual love of the band.

When the shadowy news of the reformation of the band began to solidify into something actual and real, something that you could purchase tickets for, there was no question that we were gonna get us some tickets to Coachella and witness the second coming together, as it should be...

Over beers a few weeks before the show, I asked Chris, Greta and Beth if there was a particular song that they hoped the Pixies played when we went to see them. We all had one, but I remember Chris saying "Caribou", it was the song that got him into the band and was one that still held a special place for him.

Well we went. We braved the 112 degree heat and inability to bring in your own water. And witnessed an event that, I know meant so much to so many of the thousands of others there, but seemed like one of the MAJOR events of our four lives together. We were blissed out, we were rocked out, we were where we were supposed to be.

A moment that I hope to hold onto for the rest of my days: The band started the first notes to "Caribou" and Chris turned to me with a huge smile and said, "catch me".

Well, I was given a DVD for Christmas of the Pixies doing one of their reunion gigs. As a bonus there are extra tracks of them performing various songs at other venues, including a couple from that seminal Coachella show.

One of the three from Coachella? Yup, "Caribou".

I was going to wait to watch the show until Beth came back from California, but I couldn't resist me a little "Caribou" action. I realized about halfway through the song that I was holding my breath and my heart was beating really fast. It was a little overwhelming.

I hope you all had a good Christmas.

Sometimes You Have To Work On Christmas (Eve), Sometimes

Yeah, I’m here at work on Christmas Eve, gotta keep the customer satisfied, as Simon and/or Garfunkel said. It could be worse, I could be one of the poor saps who have to work on the big Christmas Day, but Christmas Eve has traditionally been a big day in my family.

Since I was born (except for the years that I spent Christmas in California), we have gone to my grandmother’s house for the afternoon/evening. It started out with everyone from my grandmother’s side of the family, cousins removed 4 or 5 times that I could never remember the names of. As my grandparents got older, and it got more difficult to have that many people in their house, the celebration got trimmed down to the immediate family – which is still a healthy 25-30 people (depending on who shows).

We are a family without many traditions, but this was one of them, and it was a day that I looked forward to almost as much as Christmas itself. There was always a lot of love and laughter in that little house; good times with cousins that are closer than siblings are in some families.

This is the first Christmas since grandpa passed away, and it’s the first year that Christmas Eve will be celebrated outside of that house that my mother grew up in, a house that still stands and has since been passed to my cousin.

So I feel a little melancholy sitting in my cube today, knowing there will be a hole which cannot be filled in all of family’s souls where once stood a giant, drinking Rainier beer from a can, smiling and laughing.

I’ve decided I’m gonna stop at a gas station on my way outta here, pick me up some Rainier and have a drink in the big guy’s honor. I know somewhere he’s having one himself.

Stirrin' It Up At The Sex Shop

Sometimes I just like disturbing people. I don’t want to be malicious… No, I do want to be a little malicious. I like to test boundaries a little bit, it’s been an issue in the past.

It occurred to me today that I might want to try something. I might want to walk into an adult bookstore and begin perusing the glossy magazines and the tantalizing DVD covers, picking up a variety of “toys” and hefting them as if gauging their girth.

If I were to then get on my cell phone and sing “happy birthday” to someone, and make it sound like I was doing so to a young kid… Would people up and leave? Would there be a mad riot? Would there be a risk of being torn apart, limb from limb?

Well, I’ll find out tonight. I still need to do a little Christmas shopping for Mom.

Still Laughs At Fart Jokes

I have the mind of a five year old sometimes. Really asinine and immature jokes still make me nearly pee myself.

Example one, a headline today that reads: Scientists Find More Rings Around Uranus. That joke never gets old.

Up here in rain city, we have a burger place called Dick’s, it was immortalized in a Sir Mix-A-Lot song. We live right around the corner from said Dick’s. They are not good hamburgers, but they’re in an old fashioned walk up stand and they're open till like 2am for the drunkards needing bad fast food.

But, example two of why my mind is like that of a pre-pubescent: 2 guys were talking about their fast food habit, and this is how the story went (without a hint of irony):

“I love me some Dick’s”

“I used to eat Dick’s every night.”

“I could definitely do that.”

“Now I only eat Dick’s about once a week.”

I did shoot coffee out of my nose when I heard this. Nobody else seemed to notice why this was so effing hilarious though. I guess they mentally aged past 7th grade.

Shoulda' Picked Me Up A CD...

So Greta called a couple of weeks ago, practically shrieking that she and Chris had seen The Wrens play at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco (I heart Bottom of the Hill by the way) and that they were coming to Seattle and we needed to see them. Needed to!

The radio station that I listen to here in Seattle, KEXP (I also heart KEXP by the way), was doing their Christmas concert thing and The Wrens were playing along with Okkerville River, Harvey Danger and a couple of other bands. I didn't know anything about any of these bands, I was going in blind, so my expectations were not high.

I do want to say though that I have found some of my favorite bands without knowing a damn thing about them. I first came across Califone as an opening band, same with Dieselhed (a San Francisco band that hands down put on some of the funnest shows I've ever seen). I first saw the Mountain Goats (at Bottom of the Hill, by the by), a band that would go on to beautifully break my heart again and again, without having heard song one.

So I had heard that "Flagpole" song by Harvey Danger a few years back. It's a fun song, but it had relegated the band to one hit wonder status in my mind. I was surprised by the band, by the lead singer, by how much I enjoyed what they did. Okkerville River came out and blew the doors off. Even with the lead singer being sick, these guys rocked it. Turns out I had heard one of their songs before without knowing it, but it didn't come till towards the end of the set and I was already sold.

But The Wrens... Holy Fuck! Those were the only words that would come to me for days to describe my experience with The Wrens. These guys came out and finished me off like a violent, talented hooker. Man, oh man!

I knew a little bit about some label woes with these guys, how they were forced to be out of circulation for some years, and when the two guitarists came out to start the show they were a little older than the rest of the bands on the stage that night. The song started with some echo heavy guitar and light, almost wispy singing, but I was completely unprepared for what would happen when the rhythm section came out.

The Wrens are rock stars, pure and simple! This will be one of those shows that I measure all other shows by (and they will probably not measure up). It was one of those shows that hurt me the next day from doing the classic rockin' out head bob. I cannot recommend enough seeing The Wrens live. Seriously, holy fuck!

Snow Day #3

The typical "fun" things that kids talk about doing in the snow tend to run out of entertainment value faster than a coke whore. Snow angels? Blow me! Lying in the snow and flailing your arms around is only fun if you're watching someone have a seizure.

Building a snow man? It's okay at first, when you have grand visions of sculpting out of snow a human form that will put Michelangelo’s David to shame. But ultimately they all end up looking like... well like three snowballs stacked on top of each other. And all the hand-me-down scarves, carrot noses, and corn cob pipes don't change that.

Sledding rules, no doubt, but you do eventually get tired of dragging that thing back up the hill over and over again.

Snowball fights... Shit yeah! Stupid aggression checked by hurling weapons at each other with force. I don't know which bully first thought of packing frozen water into a ball and hucking it at someone else’s face, but they were brilliant.

I remember my brother and I both had "secret weapon" snow balls that we would bust out as the need arose. My brother loaded his with a chunk of gravel in the center. This was a little messed up, and frankly hurt like a bitch, but it did add a little more realistic threat to the snowball wars knowing he had one in his arsenal. I would make a hard little ball, roll it in water and let it freeze up a little, then pack a bigger ball around it. Those fuckers could cause concussions.

I used to have fantasies about full scale, neighborhood snowball fights. Our team would have snow tunnels and igloo like bases, a rotating squadron of folks building snowballs so our arsenal would be full. And radios, oh yeah, we'd have headset radios so we could talk to each other while we were sneaking through the dark and snowy woods with a ball in each hand. Eventually we would frighten their team (by not only our amazing strategic abilities, but by a constant weapon pounding) into mistakenly trudging out onto the frozen pond, snow blind and terrified. The ice would crack and plunge them into a freezing, horrible, watery death.



Writing your name in the snow is also pretty cool I guess...

When There's No More Room In Hell...

I’m a fan of the horror film. I’m a big fan of the sub-genre, zombie film. Good ones though, and as far as the good ones go, George Romero has it in spades. Mr. Romero made the original Night of the Living Dead, which is a classic, but for just sheer balls out, social commentary rich, zombie action, you gotta go with Dawn of the Dead.

Dawn of the Dead is not only one of the best zombie films, it’s one of the best horror films ever made. Yup, I said it.

I remember the commercials for the film back when it came out in the late seventies, but I did not see it until I was a young teenager. This intense story of a pack of survivors holing up in a shopping mall during a zombie apocalypse turned my head around. Gory, undoubtedly the goriest thing I had seen at that point, and yet just sharp and intelligently funny.

That was a long preamble to telling you I recently re-watched Shaun of the Dead (which, seriously, I cannot praise enough. Just a great, great, funny film… with zombies). A sort of running joke in Shaun of the Dead is that before the zombies begin to take over, it is difficult to tell that the everyday people weren’t already zombies.

This began to prey on my mind as I walked through the cold and dark streets of Seattle this morning round about five in the AM. There were a large number of people shambling about, a larger number than during the week; shambling around like, well like zombies.

I got to thinking, you know, if the zombie apocalypse happened while I was asleep, how would I know that these early morning street junkies weren’t flesh eating ghouls? I began to mentally catalogue the contents of my bag, wondering what was in there that could take down the undead. Would I have the power and wherewithal to use my metal address/check book as a weapon?

Frankly, I already had enough on my mind worrying about getting mugged for skag money. Damn you, overactive imagination!

The Smell of Wine and Cheap Perfume

Someone opened the door last night, and I stormed the gates with a vengeance. I hate Journey. Man I hate ‘em. Hearing one of their songs makes me want to put forks in my eyes and set them on fire.

I told my coworkers that if I were able to build a time machine, I would go back in time and kill Steve Perry when he was six years old, either by hiring someone to do it or by “accidentally” shoving him into a cage of pit bulls, so that the world can be spared the horror that is Journey.

- I was asked if I would go back in time to kill Steve Perry over killing Hitler and I said yes. I was kidding though. I would go back in time, kidnap Steve Perry, and use his supple body to kill Hitler. –

Okay, I grew up at a time when Journey Escape was the biggest thing since… I don’t know, some other shitty band’s big fucking record. I didn’t like it then when it was overblown to the point of a videogame being based on the album cover, and it certainly hasn’t aged well. I mean no one roller skates to power ballads anymore.

My comments were met with legitimate shock. My coworkers couldn’t believe that someone could hate Journey, let alone with the sort of vehemence that I was displaying. “They invented the power ballad!”, they said. No folks, KISS invented the power ballad, get a grip.

And they’re good people, they are, but as they are Journey fans, they must be smote.

Especially since I can already see it in their shiny little eyes – a Christmas copy of Journey’s Greatest Hits.

Is That General Tsao's Chicken?

The super power that I would choose for today, would be the ability to change my scent.

Now this is just for today mind you, the practicality of this “super power” is, well, slim to none; it’s no x-ray vision or being able to fly. And frankly, the ability to stop mastermind criminals is also pretty limited. Unless I was able to change my scent to rotting flesh left in a box in 100 degree heat that would be so overbearing that the super villain had do double over and dry heave, thus causing them to drop the bags of money they had stolen that have big $’s on them.

But I was thinking more along the lines of changing my smell to that of an ocean breeze, or fresh mowed grass, or scratch-n-sniff lemon. In fact, I could become an ever changing scratch-n-sniff patch, a human Glade Plug-in!

Some smells that I’d really love to be able to toss out of my pours for a day (as opposed to my normal soap-masked Billy funk) are:

Beer
Cedar
Chinese Food (not that cheap greasy shit, but good garlicky, black-beaney stuff)
Cold Sand
Gasoline
French Fries
Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon
Old Books
Purple
Scotch Tape
Bananas (just before they’re banana bread material)
Freshly Vacuumed Carpet

Honestly, I think the most fun would be to make people close to me think they’re having a stroke when I throw out the smell of oranges or burnt toast… I’m honestly not really super hero material.

Trane v. Jolie

I was going to write about Mr. John Coltrane today, but I’m not up to it. I’m going to need to put it off and wait till the words will not fail me. There is a power in Coltrane that I cannot do justice to today…

So instead I’m going to talk about venom lip gloss.

There are some ladies next to me who have put on some lip gloss that is apparently supposed to plump up their lips. It also apparently makes their lips burn while they are being engorged with blood.

I need to pat myself on the back a little bit as I willingly took myself out of the conversation by putting on headphones. I don’t do this for me, I do it because I WILL say something that will be wildly offensive to someone around me. They were saying the words, “my lips are burning” and “oh, it hurts a little bit” and “rub it on my lips” and “engorged with blood”. I do not normally have the wherewithal to censor myself.

This is so unlike me, really. Papa, I’m ascared.

And the interesting/sad/ironic thing is that these ladies were talking about what a skank Angelina Jolie is. And nearly in the same breath, "jolieizing" their lips. Not that emulating her lips will then make them skanks, but... I shake my head in wonder.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: Magical Mystery Tour by The Beatles

Snow Day #2

I was at a girl’s birthday celebration, back around the age of thirteen. This was I believe in February, and the snow was still thick on the land.

I like that phrase, “the snow was still thick on the land”. It sounds sort of old-timey. It sounds like the way a grandfather figure would start a story while he sits in front of a fire, focusing on a long winter past and completely ignorant of how to entertain a group of people listening to his long and hackneyed fables; said people’s minds start drifting and concocting plans on how to do away with gramps in his sleep and make it look like an accident.

Sorry, I digress. Anyway, there was a barn on the property, complete with a hay loft door upstairs. We went out to the barn, all of us, tramping through the snow. I can’t remember why we went out there exactly, there wasn’t really anything to look at.

During the whole party, I was trying to grab the attention of a girl, and I was failing miserably. We were all walking back to the house and it fell on me all at once that this girl wanted nothing to do with me – and I felt like a bigger loser than normal (and at thirteen that was a depression bomb that would lay major waste).

I fell behind the rest of the group and stopped, standing there in the snow and watching them get smaller and smaller as they got further from the barn. I let loose a miserable groan and let myself fall with force to the snow.

I lay there for a moment, watching the snow come down through the light streaming out from the barn. I didn’t realize that Danny had stayed behind and was now calling me from the upstairs hayloft door. I raised my head and looked at him. He was waving in silhouette, his shadow stretching out long between me and the barn. Chris was also up there, in a dress that went down to her calves, and I remember thinking that she must be cold in that dress. Just then she started doing a spastic Charleston dance routine that made me laugh so hard… I laid my head back down and laughed up into the falling snow.

To this day, when I think of that tiny silhouette and long shadow doing that shaky-kneed dance, I still smile like a goon.

{This Is What Happens When I'm Tired & Bored}

I stayed out later than I intended last night, eating Persian food and drinking flagons of beer. Seriously, I can only think to call these 6 gallon mugs of beer as flagons…

Anyway, work is so very tiring today, a Saturday, a day I should be lying about and enjoying a sleepy, nappy time feel. I wanted to share a question that occurred to me as I was walking into the building this morning, the weather finally taking on that full-fledged winter biting cold that requires a knit scarf and Gorton’s Fisherman hat: If I am willing to trade the ability to breathe underwater (unaccompanied) for never having another drop of booze, does that mean I’m not an alcoholic?

Never mind, I never asked that question. Instead enjoy this picture I created at work, while the system was down, using the primitive “paint” program; it’s a lion eating Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ Robin Leach. Enjoy:

Pigs On The Wing

This is my Friday office daydream:

An enormous, stuffed pig is wheeled in over the cubicle farm on tracks in the ceiling I had never noticed before. It’s like a Pink Floyd show, without the music and contact high. It stops over by Kirsten’s cube and sways precariously.

And then Jeff (who frankly always seemed a little unstable), comes charging at it with a mini baseball bat. He has this oddly piercing and warbling war cry and this look in his eyes that resembles that of a man being carried down river by a current stronger than he had expected. Jeff takes a swing at that pig. When nothing happens, he takes another swing. When the “destruction” that follows can only be described as a mild disturbance to the pig’s swinging, Jeff puts his all into it and swings once more.

The pig splits open and out pours hundreds of paper airplanes in a variety of sizes and folds. They go immediately into attack mode. This sounds more impressive than it actually is as these things have no engines or weapons.

But those front points do manage to get into a few eyes, causing bewildered cries of pain; there are paper cuts aplenty. The casualties befall both sides however. At one point a smaller plane crashes straight into a bamboo stalk on Kristel’s desk and crumples. Tiny paper bodies fall out of the torn fuselage and litter her desk like it was a linoleum Gettysburg.

They bleed correction fluid by the way.

By the time lunch comes around there are fires scattered throughout the 4th floor. The survivors of the attack, which was all of us (well, all of us except for Jeff who was killed by three coworkers who took the opportunity during the confusion), wander around bleary eyed and scared. As a safeguard, we go to the piñata store down the street and burn it to the ground.

Haiku and Desire

Morning iced puddles
George Michael sings in my head
What a day to live

I have the strongest craving for French bread pizza (or FBP as the kids are calling it these days). And I mean like a big ol’ slab of French bread with sauce, cheese and sausage.

Bright, winter sunshine
Through the gooey, head trip toy
Paints red my cube walls

Rolling around naked, on a train moving quickly through a snowy landscape, sounds like an awesome time!

Office Holiday
Shamed by co-workers as I
Hate Secret Santa

I wish I could go back in time and avoid myself seeing the George Michael Faith video so many damn times. That song’s a lingerer, and I always felt a little uncomfortable at looking too long at his ass in those tight jeans.

Found a good use for
The Flaming Fist of Praha
Whiners on the phone

Long Stemmed Rant

Ranting is not necessarily fun for the listener; unless it’s a crazy homeless guy doing the ranting and he talks really enthusiastically about the underground slave trade of corporate drug dealers using mass transit to traffic. There is a fine line between fun and scary, and a not so professional crazy “ranter” can sidestep fun faster than a big headed toddler will fall down. And some of these guys can use telephones…

There’s something bothering me, and I want to try to not get too histrionic about it, ‘cause that’s no fun. Bush is getting flack right now from the Christian Right, who can sidestep fun faster than a coke fiend can ramble, for having his Christmas card say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. The place I work for is also getting a large number of complaints regarding the same issue. There is apparently a holy mission to make this country ‘all God, all the time’.

So I’m just going to say this quickly as a means of venting:

Not everyone in this country is a Christian, fuckheads! As President of the United States, it might be important to be inclusive of EVERYONE and not just you judgmental, exclusive, hypocritical, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, shit eaters! P.S. Much like that whacky cult Scientology, your religion is also based on book some people consider outdated science fiction!

This sort of thing makes me so angry that my eyes fall out of my head and burst into fiestas of flaming glory. I often need eye replacement surgery. I’m on a list in major hospitals around the country.

And please, do not get me wrong, I am certainly not against religion or anti-Christian. I am against people taking what is a good set of ideas and perverting them to justify hatred, racism, self-aggrandizing and disregard for anyone who does not think the same way. The basic idea of love and be good to each other becomes fascism.

Okay, sorry everybody. Let’s all just settle down, it’s only Wednesday.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: At My Post by Grandaddy

Snow Day #1

As I like to organize within disorganization, as I like working with themes, and as the weather forecaster’s keep saying “snow” with gleaming and malevolent eyes, we’re going to make each Tuesday in December a “snow day”.

Are you ready? This is going to be fun!

Back when I was in 4th grade it began snowing pretty damn hard while we were sitting in school. As it got to be towards the dark end of that day, there were concerns that we were going to be trapped, that buses weren’t going to make it.

Let me set the scene for you a little bit. I grew up in a part of Washington that at the time was, if not Butt Fuck Egypt, it was right across the county line. I lived many miles from the school I attended; many windy, hilly and narrow miles – all of which were now covered by a lot of snow.

The news that we very well may have to spend the night at the school was a thrilling one. It was very similar to that childhood dream of being trapped in the mall and having to spend the night there. I’m not sure why though, as I think the thrill of spending the night in the mall would be getting to play with everything, the only thing to play with at school would be like chalk and yardsticks and the gerbils. I guess for a lot of us it would be like an adventure, like sleeping in a couch fort.

For me it was the thrill of getting to sleep next to Cherity, the girl I had fallen in love with in second grade. Nothing was going to happen, I was 9 years old for Christ’s sake, but the idea of laying next to each other and talking late into the night… I still remember how excited this made me feel.

The busses came though, trudging through, complete with their morbidly obese and lonely drivers. The overnight school adventure dream was broken, and as a final kick to the groin, the bus taking me home could not make it all the way up to my house. I walked the final ¾ of a mile, literally uphill and through the snow, at around 9 at night.

I do remember the dark silence of walking through the middle of nowhere, large, feathery snowflakes falling lazily. It was beautiful and somehow primal, it is the scene I see in my minds eye whenever I read of a dark and snowy night.

Lap Dissolve

I walk down the street and catch the furtive glances of people and feel like somehow they know the history, there is an air of envy, a soft spoken look in the eyes that I have been healed.

This makes me think of a conversation with Christy and Matthew about something Chris had said and I go a little dizzy thinking about all the seemingly random connections and the complicated chain of events that led me to San Francisco to begin with. And I think, that at the moment before I die, I will remember everyone I ever met and remember everything ever said to me, and I will see the connections there and how it all fits together, and I will know that all the torment and worry throughout this life were a monumental waste of time.

Expecting people that don't belong here, looking for someone through a time fuzzy overlay and wanting to cry at how easy it is to get lost in that space between those layers. I feel like San Francisco is a city built on the shining promises of thousands of broken dreams, on the sheer balls to surf that light and smile. Seattle feels like the second to last refuge of a wanderlust soul, too petulant to realize itself as a safe harbor for the outcast.

I feel like I'm at home, I feel like I could travel forever.

Bathroom Etiquette - Attack of the Moans

Unless you walk in with a friend, and are trying to be funny - and sometimes, not even then - it is never (let me be really, pristinely, fucking clear here), EVER cool to grunt in a public restroom.

I don't care if your fucking in the stall. I don't care if you're finally crapping for the first time in seven days. I don't care if you've subsisted on a strict diet of broken glass and tacks and have hemorrhoids the size of small dogs to avoid down there.

I don't care if you've seen the holy light of god, and the infinite has seen fit to fill your fragile mind with the knowledge of the universe, and you and your people have been raised for generations to express your most supreme joy by sounding like some sort of rutting, hog-like animal...

Don't do it, don't grunt in a public restroom.

At home? Grunt it up, monkey face! Make yourself a grunt song. Recite the Gettysburg address with a wince, long low tones and words apparently spelled with only N's or M's. Just keep that sick shit out of a respectable men's room.

Seriously.

Dream Series #4

Another dream series that I have is I call the “travel dream”. The travel dream entails me having to get somewhere (usually by train for some reason), but my luggage is elsewhere, or not everyone in the travel group is present, or I’m running really late, or I have lost my tickets… Essentially, they are very stressful dreams.

My travel dream last night involved me getting on the train (the interior of which looked remarkably like a ferry) a split second before it took off. And as I sat down in the only available seat, inexplicably embarrassed at being the last person on, I realized that I had forgotten to bring my maps and phrase books for the destination. I started to panic a little bit.

And then something happened that I think is rather healthy, I said to myself, “bitch, relax and wing it”. Okay, that wasn’t the precise wording, but the thought was the same. This is when it gets weird…

As soon as I said this to myself, the dream changed to me, my mom and my brother sitting on the side of the road up high on a mountaintop. Baseballs would occasionally fall around us, and my mom would threaten that the next time somebody tossed their ball up here, she was going to do something about it. But she never did. At some point, this kid comes stumbling out of the bushes; they were apparently his baseballs. I realize at this moment that he is the living representation of a parable that I have since forgotten.

The kid and my brother become friends and they watch me take part in this ritual where I slice open slits in each of my toes with a huge Rambo knife. I will then stuff rings into these toe slits. I have apparently done this action many times and it doesn’t hurt, but I wince before I do each toe nonetheless. My brother turns to the baseball kid and says, “He’s slow to do this part, but just wait till he gets going”.

I realized while I was brushing my teeth what this part probably represents…

First

Welcome to December everybody, welcome to the dark advent calendar of the soul. We’re busy here counting down the days in cold, bitter and dangerous chocolates. What makes the chocolate dangerous? We won’t tell you, and that’s what makes it dangerous.

Could be spikes in it, stolen from old school punk bracelets. Could be eating a piece signals some sleeper agent nearby to throw something at you; something hard and flaming. Could be it just tastes like broiled broccoli.

Okay, and I shouldn’t be sharing this with you, but the dangerous chocolate is only a ruse to keep you from eating all of it in one sitting and then slyly taping the cardboard doors shut afterwards. Just like when your younger sibling gets to open the next day's piece and finds there’s no treat and starts crying like a wounded marsupial and you’ve got that stupid look on your face like, “they must have forgotten to put the chocolate in that one”.

Like there’s no advent calendar quality control. There is, my good people, and they’re burly and poorly educated.

I shouldn’t be sharing this with you either, but the fifteenth has a Life Saver, no chocolate. While the Wint-O-Green really sort of represents December to me, I had to go with the Butter Rum. Butter Rum will one day literally save my life.