The feather I used t'wear in m'cap is morphing to a load-a-crap

This week I am spending time not doing the things I want to. I am also not doing the things I need to.

If I get off my duff, will it be worth reaping the imagined rewards, or should I just entertain myself with mindless smarty-pants activities? I could read one of a hundred books I have not finished, including the four in my work locker that I ambitiously borrowed from the library on Monday. There is slim chance of finishing one of them, and I am bogged down with endless chores that I need to do to keep a clean and orderly home, which will help please my special lady, and keep her on my side.

I could blow it all off and play one of 20 or so video games that looked like fun, but I have merely played the first half hour of, only to get frustrated and start looking up cheats on the net, which almost always sucks me back into the rabbit hole of link clicking nirvana. I am so bogged down in information by this thing that I cannot decipher bona-fide truth from paranoid ranting or slick hucksterism. (It is truly a struggle to not look up a word in the last sentence on the tubes, only to get sucked back in. I had I minor fit 20 minutes ago because there was something wrong with the connection or my settings which would not let me hook up to the wi-fi.)

Just stopping to create what I love is getting hard, and I have barely started. Seriously, distraction is now the enemy. I could spend some more time eating peanut butter, or I could drink so much more coffee that I cannot sit still. Or I could drink some whiskey and beer and for several hours I can bounce of the floors and walls, only to find myself doing nothing but sitting still for the next three days. Time to make a plan. Create structure in the chaos. Funnel the distraction into a hodge podge of cacophony so as to show anyone who is interested what it is like to be in this skin, and with this brain throbbing with self imposed chains for which the warden chucked the key into the vast freshwater sea. It used to be a vague notion that I was floundering and wasting my ability to scrawl and scribe, but now it is a panic that I feel. Something looms that threatens to stifle it forever.

I read once that Anthony Burgess, author of “Sometimes a Great Notion” and “A Clockwork Orange” found out in his forties that he had some kind of terminal illness, and only had a very short time to live. In that time he was supposed to have penned dozens of novels, all brilliant, only to not die at all. Is that what it is going to take for me to find a reason to organize the mess swimming around in my skull or like Travis Bickle, will I wait until it is too late “...to get myself organazized”.(sic)

So here I am letting it stew and fester online with no filter, wondering if it will cost me something socially or professionally, because I offer it to anyone afflicted with clickadextria. So far there have been no takers and I don't know if I am relieved or disappointed; Probably both. It really does not matter. Thousands of people are doing the same thing and the difference is that many of them have an opinion that others want to point and stare at.

TAM8 Hookie

I thought I wanted to go to that skeptic conference again, in Vegas, last week, although I would have felt at least as much an outsider as I do walking around, hometown-wise. I imagine I would have heard the word "credulous" about a hundred times and I could have made it a drinking game. That is what it would have been, too. A drinking game where I sit in my hotel room flipping past 9 channels of horse-races, listening to conferences with a notepad and trying really hard to not appear to be the only person without at least a bachelor's degree, let alone the doctorate it is assumed most of the attendees carry around tucked inside their baggy twill blazer pocket. Last year it was a humbling experience to sit shoulder to shoulder with genuinely smart people and feel like the dumbest person in the room.

So that meant that I drank my vodka in my room and thought about why I even spent the money. I was wildly interested in the speakers, was in on many of the less technical jokes, and was familiar with many of the rock-stars of nerddom from reading the magazines, and listening to the podcasts and downloading the films. I was unable to muster the courage to talk to anyone of note, except once to introduce myself to James Randi. This went badly because I had left the talent show party minutes before, whence I silently sipped my Vod-cran and brooded about bespectacled nerd-girls that I was petrified to speak to. Mr. Randi was wheeling himself down the long open conference hall and a approached and clumsily asked permission to say hello. The great man asked me what I did in the world ,and I barely choked out my unimpressive blue-collar occupation. I mus t have looked terribly embarrassed to have to admit to such a job in a a conference full of professors, scientists and celebrities because Mr. Randi replied through white beard and mustache that the world needs XXXXX too. This did not sooth me in any way and before I could politely thank him, two handlers trotted swiftly up and rolled his chair away, leaving me feeling small and more out of place than I ever have been, in the deserted upper atrium of this massive golden casino

Circumstances did not let me go to the conference this year and it was mostly because I did not make an effort to go. I stayed home and drank and avoided painting the house. Maybe I will buy the DVD set, and while I am watching it, pretend I am an incredulously wise gentleman with so many valid arguments and articulate criticisms to add to the debate.

Hello! Hooray! Its A. Cooper in Wax

...figures seen at Wierd Michigan Wax Museum outside of St. Ignace, gateway to the Superior State,

A re-purposed Alice cooper figure plays the part of a frightened teenager running from a spook in some southern Michigan cemetary.
The Michigan Dogman
James Strang, King of Beaver Island, with one of his many wives.
Or is this Alice Cooper!?!?
Hirsute gentlemen ballplayers of the Israelite House of David Sect in Benton Harbor.
Some Indian Snake princess woman...

Porcupine Pie Pt 1

The ride up the 3 and a half miles was less muddy this time, as if peddling through this sand were much better. He finally built his own bike from scratch and was fighting the cognitive dissonance that nagged concerning the choice to go single speed on an MTB, and his legs quit halfway up every incline steeper than 15 degrees. Stupid aging hipster,getting old and feeling it a month after his fortieth revolution around the sun. He was arguably more in shape than the last ride he took up these “mountains” but ex-smoker's lung and a knee surgery were a screaming reminder of his drunken married 6 year bacchanalia. Of course the ride wasn't all bad, but he was never one to smell roses, except in retrospect. His friends considered him a constant downer and had not invited him to their parties in years.

He thought about the chickie in the ranger station. He thought about her eyes and how he avoided contact with them, lest she detect the lusty intent behind his morbid unbuttoning of her all-business ranger browns. He figured that she gets the hairy eyeball from every Cabela's flannel dad, dragging Chick-Jeans-mom and here Game-Boy Dallas and Bedazzled Madison through the tree tree tree empty motel tree tree Upper Peninsula of the Great State of Michigan. This made him feel typical and flaccid, and reminded him of a twenty-four month stint of twenties tail he sincerely regretted not savoring at the time when he was also twentyish.

He confirmed his reservation for the old warming cabin on the trail to Lake-of-the-Clouds, which he was too hung over to hike to last time he stayed there, and hoped she would SEE him as he described the tracks that he thought he saw in the mud the day before, on another trail which he imagined looked just like the paw of the stuffed cougar that guarded the door of her earth-tone visitor center. He noted with sadness that she did not look up from her database with admiration and awe of he who showed no fear and almost got a glimpse of the animal that the DNR claims no longer lives in these parts, gone the way of the wolverine, the placard below the unfortunate creature assures Madison and Dallas. She did not SEE him and she was unimpressed with his nonchalant bravery at finding the intestinal fortitude not to flee her beloved wilderness, top-speed, for the safety of his preppy apartment down in Grand Rapids, where the only predators are homeless drunken panhandlers and Christian Reformed politicians.

Now he climbed what he hoped was the last hill, pushing the muddy bike up the furrow, and wishing the gallon milk-jug was supplemented by the pint of Johnny Walker that whistled like a familiar forgiving slut to him at Kamper's Kozies Gas and Fudge, back in Nagauney. The cabin was there, finally and he pushed his overloaded bike past the fire ring and complimentary wood pile, designed to keep less courteous visitors from raping the standing dead wood in the picked over and oft visited Porcupine Mountains State Park and Recreation Area.

Un-total recall pt.2

Time has come and I shod myself for battle. I won't find a deeper meaning if I try; I just have to spout until the fountain of vomit turns into a life affirming seed of acknowledgment of the violence and purposelessness of my former and present life. The markers I wishfully plant on the soil of this well trod moon are kicked over and rusty, despite the lack of gravity and moisture on these craters of the missing chunks of my brain, which I so willingly mined for their semi-precious contents during the gold rush years of the late nineties. These excavations were exacerbated by many blows to the head, some self inflicted and some gifted by others, but all well deserved, truth be told. There was no beating I could take that I could not give better to myself.
Being that this character that I played was so closed up in himself that he could only pretend to communicate with the outside, every conversation with others was really a monologue with himself. A quest to be a good guy was always trumped by self preservation and many secret shames that caused loathsome thoughts to be projected on others, after they were thoroughly tested on himself. This is not a fun thing to write about, nor to read, for him or others, and it is not evidently therapeutic. Eventually I hope that he can get it all out of his system and start focusing on something but navel gazing, but until then, he must spout into this void of a forum.

A story seems like a good place to start, so let us imagine a blue-grey sky of a curly photo with jagged borders, as if made by pinking shears. The writing on the back says something like Norfolk, VA, 1973. There is a woman with darkish pony-tale tied at the bottom of her neck that holds hair covering most of her forehead in a V. Narrow and horizontally wide dark framed oval glasses hide most of her eyes. One cannot tell if they are kind or dull or malignant eyes. Unremarkable pale skin contains thin lips and a nose that is stuck right in the usual place. A more dark than light flower pattern one piece mini-dress falls just at the crest of her decency, held to a slightly scandalous height above stick legs by a 8.5 month pregnant belly under flattish breasts. The photo girl of 19 or 22 is barefoot in sand that looks equally cold and hot. The horizon appears to belong to the Atlantic with distant moody clouds, but could as easily be Lake Superior on a particularly overcast early September evening. The angles of one or three uniform little cottages pike up to the left distance behind the puzzling young lady. She does not smile or frown. She is just not looking at anything, and certainly not the camera. What a mistake, her blankness seems to project, and one wonders if this lady should have done the smart thing 8 months before, and kept her legs shut, or saw a discrete doctor, or refused the cheap diamond chip ring that does not show up in the photo.

Un-Total Recall

Today I was hit square in the clunker, or is that the thinker? I was also reminded today that I have a purpose. I have had a good dinner with a bad condiment, and now it is time to renegotiate the terms of this existence. Time is now to make mistakes, and time is now to regurgitate. The failure of 37 years immediately transformed into something tangible and and slightly coherent. I am allowed to suck and may continue to suck, but I forgive myself and press on. Fitting the contents of my head on paper should be a simple task of recall, but neurons all got snapped and crackled through many years of substance induced boredom relief.

I will now turn that into an asset, if not a minor speed-bump. I went into that devil's bargain 20 years ago with a mystical starry-eyed teenage plan to find the Big Answer to the Big Question. I did not find either one and found myself scrambled and distorted even more than I was made screwy by my so-called protectors, mentors, and friends. But I will return to that mole-hill eventually. For now I concern myself with the quester's journey through the doors of perception, and the bitter foyer it left me standing in for two decades. One should have heeded the warnings of Nancy and Mr. T, and just said no, and stayed in school, but one was mildly creative with technicolor dreams and starry eyed hopes of communal living off the land, in a bus, an autonomous collective, or an artist's colony, hence older, bearded and flowing dress wearing mentors clamored to show a young rapscallion seeker the way to righteous brotherhood and higher understanding of the Universe.

The Young Seeker had shot his brain through a candy coated cannon, paused to pick up the pieces that he could, and scraping what could be salvaged off of the walls and gates of the imagined garden that was an ideal that died a hundred thousand times in the hopes of far more capable, articulate, and resourceful holy wanderers than himself. Even then he did not learn his lesson, repent, and go sin no more. Instead he found his true calling in the dizzy joys of liquid obliteration. He traded in his garish swirls for loud, dark and scabby bacchanalia. Organic gut twisting made way for sloshing angularity. Chaos reigned and the scales were picked up out of the dirt and put back in, septic real and tragic. Instead wringing out the visions of the subconscious, they were vomited and shat with an impatient velocity.

The left-overs of the hip-sixties and seventies are often tritely quoted as considering the whole era a blur, and that their badge of authenticity is the fact that they can't remember shit about the particulars of the time. I think perhaps that much like me and my nineties, they feel the acute shame and dread of being found out for the sad hypocritical wastes that they are and feign ignorance of their inaction and blissful apathy. The truth, however, is that I could not have had the dangerous, ludicrous and reckless joys without breaking a lot of ethical laws, and also watching many of my comrades fall out, some forever into the trash heap of a graveyard or worse, being reviled by the people who once shared the absurd joys that we cherished more than our self-respect and dignity.

Don't misunderstand me; I refuse to regret the tragicomedy I shared with neglected family, indifferent friends and laughable enemies, but it is just a little regrettable that something more noble did not come out of our wreckage. I don't know if my story is worth the price of the light on this video-screen, but I don't write this for you anyway. I am still just as selfish now as when I was when I was a crazy substance chugging nutkins, but I am just a little less destructive.

Is This Winning?

I seem to have gotten what I wanted, yet I feel as though I am floundering. Old habits return and old resentments follow on their heels. The doors that i slammed shut years ago are pried open and the wood is splintering. How to fit my fluidly rigid world view into a structure that was built for a much younger man with a young man's vices? Did those vices harken the destruction of the old situation, and are they now the present ruiner of the same?

I paid for my sins of a decade ago, but still have my nose rubbed in them daily. I understand the resentment for which I am a target, but if I am to do my best, for better and worse, I need to be let off of a couple of hooks. I am now on an unhealthy course, with constant mental comparisons to my replacements, real or imagined. It has to stop or I hold out no hope for the current restructuring. I do not want to relive. I want to rebuild on a foundation not made of a sickly mentor/pupil dynamic, nor on a party-recovery-party cycle. Neither leads to anything but another flame-out.

I need to build this thing with something more than positive intentions. Dreams are not sufficient. I am too old to let them guide my positive inaction.

Monster

No way am I going to forgive. No chance, save senility, will I ever forget. You know who you are, while you share pleasantries with me on the brief occasions, when our paths cross. You know when I look you in the eye that you are irredeemable, or else you are a sociopath with no understanding of redemption. How you look yourself, or your spouse in the eye is a puzzle to me. I wonder if your spawn see you the way I do. Do they harbor similar rage? Do they experience the same disgust that I do? If you drove your drunk self into a tree, I would rejoice. If you put yourself in a vegetative state I would have you resuscitated, to increase your suffering. I hope you do not die because then you would be free. Since no Hell exists, eternal punishment is not an option. Go ahead and live a long and miserable life, and I will gloat at your pain, asshole.

Fiction Fiction Spazz Attackkk Ahhhhhhhhh...

Burn out or rust. It makes no difference. Are we not old...grandpa granola invents awesome.

A Fine Beginning, or How'd I get My Finger Stuck In This Bottle?

I wish I was that young Master Thomas again, burning the memories of my youth and creating my own persona. I screwed it all up, eating all the acid I could get my hands on and pretending I could get by and succeed through sheer force of whim and spite. Now I just drink a lot. I will try to get it all down, so as to record it before inevitable dementia takes over, led along gingerly by Irish whiskey and American beer.

Sometimes regret is not useful. It can crackle the neurons when sleepytime comes, making rest impossible. I wonder about the nasty thoughtless things I did when I wanted to be so idealistic and forthright. Lies that I am yet to be caught in, or else have been, but are really just incosequential to friends, acquaintences and new enemies. For example, I never actually took heroin or saw GG Allin, playing a show or in casual curcumstances. I am pretty sure that I have never actually stated that I did, but my silence when these things come up in casual conversation as these subjects often do, was underhandedly ambiguous, to be sure. This is a trait I fall back on again and again. Never deny, but do not confirm either.

It just occurs to me that tomorrow is the 31st of October. As popular mythology goes, that is the date that Mr. Allin had threatened/promised/gifted that he would off himself onstage from 1988 to 1991. As luck would have it, I was living on a hippie mountain switchback hill pup-tent in Colorado in that year and heard the news of the impending spectacle, which would have taken place in my hometown punk rock music hall. Unfortunately the event would not take place because the star conveniently ended up in jail in my home state for some sort of sexy aggravated nonsense. This is as close as I got to the whiff of his scabby grandeur.

Stalking UU, Pt 1

I don’t know what the heck I am thinking. I am totally atheistic and kind of hostile to religion in general, and xtianity specifically. The last time I semi-willingly went to a church was a midnight mass at Our Lady of Concrete, in order to please the parents of my first ex-wife. Needless to say, I was not married in a church either time, and the second time avoided any mention of the G-word, save a brief reading from Ecclesiastes, or something, to avoid the tittering of the extra-xtian family and to keep my “sainted” grandmother from having a heart-attack on the spot. So why did I shave, spray on cologne, comb and tie my hair up, put on slacks, a collar shirt, a neutral sweater, almost a tie, and drive by church at 10:15 this Sunday morning?

I tell myself that I did not stop, because the picture in my head had me walking through the door to some glad-handing deacon giving me the twice over. I tell myself that I did not stop because the smell of old lady-cologne from someone besides my “sainted” grandmother gives me the heebie-jeebies. I tell myself that, being a solitary male, and this being a Unitarian Universalist church, that I will be pegged for one of the lonely homosexuals that the rainbow banner outside proudly welcomes. I tell myself that My intentions for coming alone will be misconstrued by wary earth-mothers and tweedy-yet-protective fathers. I tell myself that I forgot to pee before I left the house and do not want to immediately ask wherefore is thine restroom at a place where I know no one, and everyone knows everyone else. I tell myself that, despite the declarations on the website that many humanists and atheists enjoy fellowship with other socially liberal, enlightened, and well read people, that I just cannot accept that I am walking into a church, which is the house of God, possibly considered by many congregants, under false pretenses.

I tell myself all of these things and drive by sheepishly, hoping the squat woman in khaki pants with a pixie haircut helping her mother out of the backseat did not see me and will not peg me for an acolyte of the pathetic unemployed bigot who cowardly shot at children and the elderly during a youth musical presentation in a UU church down south last year. I keep on driving, telling myself that I will be late anyhow, if I turn around. I will try to take a seat in the back quietly, but the only spot will be two rows from the pulpit, next to three squirming kids who have not been taught lessons about respecting a stranger’s personal space. I tell myself that I will be seated between two slightly infirm octogenarians, whose walkers block my escape route when the panic attack ensues. I tell myself that the warmly smiling and plump suited minister will pause during his homily to ask the congregation to welcome new friends, whence all the unfamiliar faces will turn to me and smiley-nod, while I shrink into a puddle of sweat and neurosis.

I wonder what ever possessed me to get up on Sunday morning, purposefully, without a hangover, make myself presentable, and drive across town to this building that I lived three fourths of a block away from for the last three years, without ever going in, save for the annual rummage sale. (this is how I know they are well read; I bought loads of good books there.) Why did I even try? I know it was not to find a god that has been credulously demonstrated to me by the earnest and judgmental faithful of all stripes. I know it was not to prove to myself that I would not burst into flames, or be struck by lightening or receive the holy spirit upon crossing the threshold. I am pretty sure that It was not so that I could demonstrate my spotty knowledge of the scriptures and their many inconsistencies, inhumanities and abominations to a horrified and unwilling audience.

I think the only real reason is that I thought that I might avoid being judged too harshly for my lack of eye contact during my uneasy attempts at verbal communication with strangers. I thought that people would not gasp in horror and shake their heads decrying the shame when I answered the question of what religion I was raised in, what I converted from or whether I had AcceptedJesussAsMyPersonalSavior.

I thought that my two failed marriages would not be seen as failures of character, communication or compassion, but as necessary stages of learning and growth. I thought I would find people who did not judge the fact that I made a conscious decision never to have children because my genetics stink and I am not emotionally stable enough to maintain a marriage, let alone nurture children in a healthy and meaningful way.

I thought that I would find people who might have a built in safety net from the character flaw that some call alcoholism or addiction, without all the twelve-step promotion of pathetic helplessness that only helps people feel like victims, and makes everyone a prisoner of their vices, rather than their master. I also figured that, so far, besotted buddies and bar-stools have not helped me to be a kinder more social person, and have just served to funnel away money, time, health and motivation.

I thought I might be welcomed to participate in community projects and service programs that provide what Superior Christians call charity, without hanging the albatross of blood salvation, guilt and atonement around the necks of those they wish to help. I thought I might go because I feel alone, and have little family that can see ,clear-eyed, my point of view. I heard that their was a group of atheists and free thinkers within the UU church who preserved a love of reason and science without hiding in a godless closet, afraid to express their true feelings about supernatural woo-woo to peers and family.

So I guess I am still waiting to see if I can stop my car and walk through the door. Will I find a welcoming, but not pushy group to adopt? I guess the only way to know would be to be able to overcome this crippling shyness, that I fear makes me appear to be a stammering lunatic loner.

that's the way of the world...

Hell's Waiting Room

On xx/xx/09 I attended a Statewide Atheist Convention, which is a regional tentacle of American Atheists under the false assumption that I would not feel like an alien with a third eyeball where my mouth should be. My comfort level around these godless brethren was shaky at best and an excercise in paranoic attentiveness at worst. A goddamned Atheist also stole my good pen. So much for the Golden Rule.
Since I am in my late thirties, it was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment to be the second youngest in the room, by my super scientific observation method. The crowd skewed something like 80% over 50 and half of that was probably over 70. I did not find that lonely 20-40 year old woman with whom I would make an instant connection, and then relocate 300 miles to be near because her shiny black mane and enthusiastic lack of belief in the supernatural had hopelessly bewitched me. The whole affair just made me kind of sad. The worn-out ballroom in a one-star motor lodge made the whole event seem half-baked. The constant interruption of the video presentation projected on a 10-year-old ThinkPad with an Atari video card was also a large time waster.

I really did want to have a nice time with interesting people, and their many PhD’s, but I just had to leave before the final speaker, Dr. “Ed” Buckner, who in a secret coupe, replaced the former president of AA with himself because of personal disagreements only last winter. I have a feeling the attendance was so low and so aged because many younger people walked away from the parent organization in disgust at the ousting of the beloved and beautiful Ellen Johnson. This is only speculation based on the voices of internet trolls that clogged the message boards of AA and it’s affiliates a year ago.

Grief is the New Black

Pain, grief and despair: these are the things that make a Lars Von Trier joint so much fun. It is a wonder his actors don’t all blow their brains out on the red carpet of his premiers. I have felt shitty, guilty, and depressed in my life, but for my money, The AntiChrist is a blue-light special of misery.

Imagine a world where all men are arrogant brutes and all women are self-serving witches. Director Von Trier will re-enforce every misanthropic notion one might have and then rape it to death just to make sure you did not miss the point. If one believes that ambiguous subtlety makes a great indie feature for cerebral types like oneself, stay far away from “The AntiChrist.” If you like the notion of two bony, over-educated people having tons of hate-sex in the woods for an hour and a half, this is the movie for you.

Here is the way this thing works:

Starts with blame and anxiety>Next phase, lust>leads to self-mutilation>Observations on the Law of the Jungle>Proves the theory of the heroine, who looks like her crow totem , that nature truly is “Satan’s Church”

Chaos Reigns

Tiny Tim, ClimateGate Shill or Soothsayer of the Apocalypse?

Not a Mission Statement

My original blog got abandoned. Perhaps my old posts from there will be rehashed here or perhaps not. It may come as no surprise that I do not know what I am doing, but the nets were created by a military industrial complex (henceforth AKA Miliplex) to provide amateurs their divine right to wax profane, share banalities, and tread on the DMCA tightrope. Is the water warm enough?, Shall we begin...