A Shite State of Affairs

Memories from the Fourth Grade

2009-01-18T09:52:00.002-05:00

In the fourth grade, Mrs. Arthur's lass used to get out early from lunch. We would run through the hallways to watch a PBS show called "Read All About It." It was a mysterious show involving the occult, space travel, death, conspiracies, and literature. My God, it was great. Here is the first episode.

God Bless the Mind of Crispin Glover.

2008-11-02T19:00:00.000-05:00

The Death of Reiner Fitzdale

2008-10-25T23:09:00.003-05:00

When my house was broken into and my laptop was stolen, I lost the novel that I have been working on for the last year or so.

I am not saying that it is a tragic loss to the literary community, nor did I assume that it would ever see the light of day, but I did hope to hit that period for the final time and know that I just finished a piece of fiction completely on my own. This novel was my second attempt at writing something concrete. The first was a piece of shit novel that I envisioned as a coming-of-age story that would touch the hearts of my generation; publishing companies around the world would drop their jaws and battle over who would release the next Catcher in the Rye.

This one was different. I decided to create this novel just for the pleasure of creation. The same way I can sit myself on the couch with my guitar and just play for the sake of playing, I did the same with my laptop. I crafted the main character, Reiner Fitzdale, as I typed. He was never in my head, rather he appeared one day during a stream of flailing keystrokes and echoing keypad clicks.

I would write forty pages - the first chapter - over and over again. Rarely would I save it. I would always start from the beginning - the first word. Sometimes I following Washington Irving and unfolded the scene through vivid imagery. Other times I would start with direct characterization ala Herman Melville - but always it was never kept. The last first chapter was the best one yet. This one started with the parallelism of winter to Vermonters and the coming of old age - the breakers on the shoreline of Lake Champlain and the front locks on our doors, and it devolved into a case study of Reiner Fitzdale, the protagonist.

In each version, it was Reiner Fitzdale. The character that now plagues my mind. He begs for me to create him. Define him and to mold him.

With the laptop gone and that first chapter gone with it, I have the opportunity to start again. I can craft the words the way you restart Super Mario when you accidentally fall into a pit in World 1-1: not deep enough into the game to sacrifice the loss and early enough to not feel sorry for yourself about it.

Toothpaste For Dinner is My New Favorite Website

2008-09-16T06:40:00.002-05:00

toothpastefordinner.com

I Hate to Say It, But This Shit is Catchy.

2008-09-11T19:34:00.002-05:00

glumbert - Jesus Is My Friend

Battling Jazz Musicians

2008-08-03T18:44:00.003-05:00

Wynton Marsalis and Wycliffe Gordon, two of America's finest jazz musicians, recently found themselves renting hotel rooms on the same floor in New Orleans... they battled for supremacy against each other in this street "duel."

This may be one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time.

Happy 100th Post to Me!

2008-07-29T15:53:00.001-05:00

To celebrate, I googled my last name and got this as the top pick:

The Dark Knight Has Nothing on This...

2008-07-24T21:42:00.001-05:00

Miko Hughes and My Wedding Scared the Shit Out of Me.

2008-07-23T17:47:00.007-05:00

The wedding has ended. The honeymoon is over and I am preparing to go back to work as an educator. I am grateful to all of my family, but mostly of my friends who took the time out of their lives and the money out of their bank accounts to make the trip. We teachers get paid shit, so to spend a cool $500 on a friend's wedding in Vermont was greatly appreciated.

I will spare you the details, I won't show you the wedding pics or the honeymoon photos, but I will tell you this: I was scared shitless.

During the entire wedding planning process I maintained my cool. When Chelsea was losing her mind with the details I stayed aloof and detached from all and any strain or stress on my life. On the week of the wedding, when Chelsea was on the border of turning into Bride-zilla, I hit a Buddhist Zen-like center point, where nothing could hurt me. It was like I had gathered all of my positive energies and plopped them right into my guts.

But, on the morning of my wedding, I couldn't stop shaking. Three hours before the ceremony I passed out and slept for 2 hours. I woke up and started pacing the room, rubbing my hands and sweating. Rose told me that roles reverse on the day of the wedding; the groom loses it while the bride calms down (which Chelsea was). I, though, drank four glasses of champagne and had five swigs of whiskey from Ben's hidden flask and felt nothing before stepping up to the mic. The ceremony went without a hitch and I continued drinking through the reception and never felt the least bit drunk. The fear eventually subsided.

Total alcohol consumed: Six glasses of champagne (toasts), five swigs of whiskey, nine Magic Hat Beers, three glasses of red wine, a full bottle of red wine that I drank straight out of while dancing to Thriller with Raja, and whatever amount of gin Dave poured down my throat while Stephen and Wes held me down out in the woods.

Still went to bed sober (had a long talk with Blair at 3am outside when I couldn't sleep) and woke up at 6am with no hangover.

But I was scared shitless. And couldn't stop thinking about Miko Hughes.

That is because the only other thing that has scared me that much, at least when my life wasn't in danger, was Miko Hughes. Hughes was a child actor who grew up in front of the camera lens; a product of America's obfuscated and denied NAMBLA-appreciation. Miko was a cute kid and landed a ton of roles. But the one that got me was when he played Gage in Pet Semetary. In the film, Gage gets hit by a truck, his weeping father buries him in the Pet Semetary even though Herman Munster told him not to, and he was resurrected as Evil-Gage hell bent on killing eveything.

I saw this movie when I was a kid and, even though the movie is not necessarily scary, it was Miko who fucked me up. Miko Hughes could (and I bet still can and my "please-dance-for-me-monkey"-side and wishes he would email me a pic) turn his cute, cuddly chipmunk-face into a twisted and disgusting grimace of pure hate and evil. I remember having to turn off the movie because I just couldn't handle him. The only other time that that has happened was during two other films: Lynch's Eraserhead and Cube.

What fucking motivation does a four-year old tap into to make that face? While carrying a syringe? What did the director say to him? What the fuck? Those ideas just scared the piss out of me for some reason.

I have never seen Ricky Schroeder or an Olsen twin twist their faces into the image of a demon -- that makes Miko the greatest child actor of all time.

Plus, he hid in a boiler and killed Freddy Krueger in "New Nightmare."

Another thing that scares me about Miko is this, which was made by a crazed fan I assume:

So, congrats Miko Hughes. You are now completely attached to my wedding day in memory and spirit. Stay clear of the psycho fans and enjoy your day. Invite me to your wedding and we are even.

Send me a pic.

"Boy Oh Boy"

2008-06-15T13:27:00.001-05:00

My Lippah. My Lippah. Obey Kabey.

2008-05-21T12:23:00.005-05:00

I woke up this morning to find my upper lip numb. It felt like there was a marble resting in the frontal portion -- I squeezed for a while thinking that it was a zit or cold sore but there was no evidence to support that claim.

I asked Chelsea if my face looked weird and she said "Yeah! Your lip is swollen!"

The center of the lip bulged out like I received collagen injections in my sleep. It laid over my bottom lip a good half inch or so.

I took a shower and flicked it repeatedly with my pointer finger, thinking that this would get the blood going. But to no avail, my lip remained numb. When I drank my orange juice this morning, my entire mouth felt the coldness of the liquid, yet the 1/4 inch bulge of my front lip remained unconcerned -- it barely registered the wetness much less the temperature.

I came to work. Set up my laptop. Began prepping for administering two final exams for the day while biting my lip every so often to see if I felt anything. And all morning it remained perfectly unaware of any outside stimulus regardless of how hard I bit it.

Outside of my classroom, Madame Wells is taking her students out one at a time to administer her verbal portion of her final. Ms. Williams is, as usual, screaming about something. The scent of the stink bomb in the freshman hallway strolls casually up through the AC vent and tickles my nose. Mr. Eickhoff's snorts can be heard through the wall. And every so often, the sound of tramping feet can be heard four floors down when the Gym class laps the school in their final mile run of the school year.

And through this all, my lip stays numb.

Up until lunch. Today is the last day of school and lunchtime on the last day of school is when every student that you promised some food product to all year, suddenly calls you out. "Mr. P! You owe me Skittles!" "Mr. P, you said you would buy me french fries last semester and you never did." "Parizo! Where my nachos be at!?!?" My wallet empties on promises that I had forgotten.

While standing in line with money in my hand to buy food for other people, I did another bite test: pain. Excruciating pain. I bit too hard. I had gotten used to biting my lip harder and harder that when the feeling eventually came back, it lit my head up like fireworks.

Feelings returned in the cafeteria while I was standing in line buying food for students who I had to keep my promises to.

Will Life Be Worth Living in 2,000AD?

2008-05-20T08:04:00.003-05:00

This is from a magazine article in 1961.

July 22, 1961, Weekend Magazine

What sort of life will you be living 39 years from now? Scientists have looked into the future and they can tell you.

It looks as if everything will be so easy that people will probably die from sheer boredom.

You will be whisked around in monorail vehicles at 200 miles an hour and you will think nothing of taking a fortnight's holiday in outer space.

Your house will probably have air walls, and a floating roof, adjustable to the angle of the sun.

oors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

You'll have wall-to-wall global TV, an indoor swimming pool, TV-telephones and room-to-room TV. Press a button and you can change the décor of a room.

The status symbol of the year 2000 will be the home computer help, which will help mother tend the children, cook the meals and issue reminders of appointments.

Cooking will be in solar ovens with microwave controls. Garbage will be refrigerated, and pressed into fertiliser pellets.

Food won't be very different from 1961, but there will be a few new dishes - instant bread, sugar made from sawdust, foodless foods (minus nutritional properties), juice powders and synthetic tea and cocoa. Energy will come in tablet form.

At work, Dad will operate on a 24 hour week. The office will be air-conditioned with stimulating scents and extra oxygen - to give a physical and psychological lift.

Mail and newspapers will be reproduced instantly anywhere in the world by facsimile.

There will be machines doing the work of clerks, shorthand writers and translators. Machines will "talk" to each other.

It will be the age of press-button transportation. Rocket belts will increase a man's stride to 30 feet, and bus-type helicopters will travel along crowded air skyways. There will be moving plastic-covered pavements, individual hoppicopters, and 200 m.p.h. monorail trains operating in all large cities.

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

Railways will have one central dispatcher, who will control a whole nation's traffic. Jet trains will be guided by electronic brains.

n commercial transportation, there will be travel at 1000 m.p.h. at a penny a mile. Hypersonic passenger planes, using solid fuels, will reach any part of the world in an hour.

By the year 2020, five per cent of the world's population will have emigrated into space. Many will have visited the moon and beyond.

Our children will learn from TV, recorders and teaching machines. They will get pills to make them learn faster. We shall be healthier, too. There will be no common colds, cancer, tooth decay or mental illness.

Medically induced growth of amputated limbs will be possible. Rejuvenation will be in the middle stages of research, and people will live, healthily, to 85 or 100.

There's a lot more besides to make H.G. Wells and George Orwell sound like they're getting left behind.

And this isn't science fiction. It's science fact - futuristic ideas, conceived by imaginative young men, whose crazy-sounding schemes have got the nod from the scientists.

It's the way they think the world will live in the next century - if there's any world left!

Hijacked Laptop

2008-05-16T13:22:00.003-05:00

Images found in my Photos folder after I returned to my desk this afternoon.

Besides these four, there were another 38 left in the folder.

Garfield in True Life

2008-04-24T07:37:00.005-05:00

In the fifth grade, my teacher would take her students and I to the library to find a book for silent reading. There would always be a mad rush to get to the Garfield books. I remember thinking that Garfield was the funniest thing on the planet (next to Alf).

As I grew up, Garfield lost its humor. It became boring and as about as funny as scrotum kick to a priest.

Now, my love for Garfield has returned with a slight twist. People who post on the internet tubes have begun taking the nationally published Garfield and removing the orange tabby... the result is a sad, depressed, and more accurate view on the life of common man (AKA: reality). Jon Arbukle becomes a hilarious, modern study of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These are hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. I would buy a book of Garfield comics again if the lasagna-feasting feline was MIA. I seem to relate to it more.

A Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock

2008-04-17T21:06:00.013-05:00

The wedding date is drawing near and Ben and Jef are itching to figure out what we are going to do for a bachelor's party. At first, we aimed for the stars: what is the one childhood dream of all boys, but few never attain? No, not a major league baseball player, Ben, Jef, and I were more of the listening-to-the-Violent-Femmes group than the wearing-jerseys-to-school crowd. Instead, we decided to go to Space Camp. They have Space Camp for adults and it worked for us.

Then we found out that it costs a hell of a lot of money, so that was out. The next step was to go to Birmingham, home of Space Camp, buy astronaut uniforms and walk around Birmingham's bars, completely wasted, and tell everyone that we were at Space Camp (or counselors as Jef suggested). Eventually, when flight fares for Jef and Ben came near the $1000 mark, that fell aside to "we will figure something out."

It looks like we are going to Montreal. I am happy with that. An ancestor of mine is the Thomas Jefferson of Quebec and there is a statue of him in some park somewhere in the old city that I saw once when I was a kid: there is a part of me that really wants to see it again.

Montreal is about an hour and forty-minutes away from Burlington. When our friend Raj got his license, we began pilgrimages into Canada on a regular basis. With each journey we would head a little deeper into the Great White North, inching our way to Montreal. First we travelled into a small town about twenty minutes over the border. We bought some soda, Raj bought some cough syrup for the codeine, and went back to the States. We did this same thing regularly. Eventually we made it as far in to reach "Cafe-a-Go-Go" -- a trashy little strip club about an hour from the city. We hung outside at two in the afternoon, wondering if we would get in. We chickened out and headed back to the land of Apple Pie.

It was during a sleep over that the decision was made that we were going to go all the way into the city: the Montreal bars and strip clubs would baste the United States' consumerism with advertisements during late night movies and Saturday Night Lives. It was the blonde wearing the silvery, shiny, skin-tight dress who smiled seductively into the camera, who waved a tiny hand that tapped into our pubescent minds. I don't remember which one of us announced it, but one of us said: "Fuck it! We are going!"

Club Foufons Electronique was our spot. They didn't care about the date on your driver's license. They only cared that your money was green and not Canadian-monopoly money and we were happy to oblige. We'd hang in this club for hours, into the wee hours of the Canadian morning. Talking to french speaking girls, getting phone numbers, and disappearing periodically for God-knows-what. We were young, we were wild, we were a Bon Jovi song with US currency in our pockets and no bills to pay.

We would wander around sometimes. We would hit the club circuit on Rue de la Montagne, lower St. Catherine Street, and such. One time, Jason mouthed off to some bikers and we had to run to our car, hiding in alleyways whenever we heard the rumbling of an approaching Harley, and tore out of Montreal and to the border within an hour.

We went back because we were children of the nineties and Lollapalooza came to Isle de St. Helene. We saw Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, The Boredoms, Parliament, A Tribe Called Quest, L7, and Weezer. Andy drank "mind juice" -- a psychedelic substitute beverage which was supposed to induce a slight hallucinogenic trip, but instead he vomited on some girl.

Montreal was our freedom place. It was a spot where we could live without fear of getting caught, we could leave our nerdiness behind us and become new people. It was an escape from our world and it was only two hours away. We would never tell each other of our limits. We would never hold the things we did there against each other. We never passed judgment. We never tried to remind each other that somewhere a little ways south was reality, and that we would have to return to it before the sun rose over Nova Scotia.

And now we are going back. We are bringing our bags under our eyes, our bald spots (at least Jef and I are), and our American money (which is worth nothing) and going back to Hab-Town. We want to see Club Fouf and go in regardless of what it is now (probably a Starbuck's) and walk down St. Catherine Street which I hear is cleaned up (no strip clubs... au revoir Clube Super Sex). Instead of hanging in clubs and keeping counts over twenty dollar bets, we are going to hang out in the parks and shops. We will more than likely end up at the Dubliner, Montreal's only Irish Pub (because it is not going anywhere) and, at some point, I will stare into the marble eyes of a long-dead blood relative who laid the seed for the city that will be surrounding me. We are bringing our responsibilities, our vows to significant others, and our new found adulthood and the constant voice in the back of our heads telling us that we are due back south before the sun completely disappears over Vancouver. I wonder if I will even recognize the place. And we will probably listen to the Violent Femmes during the car ride back into the States.

And in the room the women come and go
talking of Guy Lefleur.

Baby, Did You Forget To Take Your Meds?

2008-03-18T11:04:00.005-05:00

A couple of weeks back I went to a counselor for the first time. I wasn't feeling like myself and Chelsea had noticed a sharp increase in my ability to belittle and degrade myself lower than usual. This goes beyond my usual moodiness (if you know me, you know I can flip emotions in a heartbeat). But Chelsea stated that this was different and it appeared that I was attempting to sabotage any successes that were coming to me. She stated that she wanted me to see someone about it, so I did.

We sat. We talked. I talked more. He listened. He said some stuff. I listened. We shook hands. I left.

Depression. Depressed. No danger to myself or others. Yay for me!

I refused to go to the local drugstore to pick up some meds that were supposed to help balance the off-kiltered chemicals in my brain. But instead, I threw it out.

It was cool to talk to someone who wouldn't pass judgement. I didn't open up too much, just enough to know that I wasn't an over-worrier but never told him about the Japanese man who lives in my head and tells me to burn things... a nice even balance of "knows-right-from-wrong" and "collects-his-own-feces." The idea of chemically altering my personality scares me because it takes away who I am. Even if I don't have control of my emotions as much as the next guy, the emotions are still my own and I would like to keep it that way. It is the only thing that is true.

And Now A Little Somefing For The Ladies.

2008-02-23T22:48:00.004-05:00

If you can’t read the above, here’s the text:
1943 Guide to Hiring Women
The following is an excerpt from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine. This was written for male supervisors of women in the work force during World War II.

“Eleven Tips on Getting More Efficiency Out of Women Employees: There’s no longer any question whether transit companies should hire women for jobs formerly held by men. The draft and manpower shortage has settled that point. The important things now are to select the most efficient women available and how to use them to the best advantage.

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they’re less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn’t be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and to deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It’s always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that “husky” girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Give the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they’ll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowances for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can’t shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl’s husband or father may swear vociferously, she’ll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can’t be stressed too much in keeping women happy.”

Wow, who knew hiring a girl could be such a pain? To wrap up–fat chicks are more dependable but who wants that, have a psychologist on hand to help them with their female insanities, give them ample time to preen themselves or they’ll go into some sort of dissheveled female rage and keep them busy to keep their mouths shut and bad language makes them cry. That’s a lot of work.

Something New That Makes Me Happy

2008-02-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

New Album 4.1.8

Nothing to say

2008-02-10T16:49:00.001-05:00

I have nothing to say today, this kid basically sums it all up for me:

...

2008-02-04T21:14:00.000-05:00

Hi Patti.

Life in Balance

2008-02-02T17:26:00.001-05:00

I lost a huge part of my web-life this month: one of my favortie websites/blog pages is shutting down. Rockandrollconfidential.com is shutting down. For years, I would log in and laugh hysterically at really bad band pictures, listen to awful bands, and watch homemade videos of crappy bands. I even submitted to the site and successfully had a band pic posted (no, not my own band).

The blogger says that he is tired and no longer feels it. I understand that. Time to let it go.

But, I discovered something that balances out my life: Flight of the Conchords. FlotC is a New Zealand comedic-folk duo that has their own show on HBO. I don't have cable so I have never seen it before. But after youtube-ing a few clips of the show and live performances, I am hooked. Honestly, Flight of the Conchords is one of the funniest shows I have seen. Their website seems to always mention whenever they are compared to The Beatles, so in hopes of Bret or Jermaine stumbling on this:

Flight of the Conchords is better than The Beatles.

Final Blog

2008-01-04T23:46:00.000-05:00

Andrew Olmsted was a blogger who was killed in Iraq. Before leaving for Iraq, he made a friend promise to post his final blog in the event of his death... the link is below.

here

Holidays Are For Other People

2007-12-03T21:53:00.000-05:00

My mother called me the day after Thanksgiving and bitched me out. Once again, another year of holidays is passing and I have pulled away from all family members and all family gatherings; I don't call them on Thanksgiving. I never have and I probably never will.

I don't know why. I told my mother once that I despised Thanksgiving. She laughed and told me that that was the day my father left us when I was two years old. But I hardly feel that that is the true reason.

I hate the month of November as it reminds me of all the unplayed events of the summer: the death to all my springtime goals and dreams and comes as a reminder of another year spent doing nothing. I hate the food. Turkey that clings to your throat: dry and obnoxious. Stuffing, which is nothing more than wet breadcrumbs, slammed into the anus of a dead bird. The mashed potatoes are good, but then, I can eat those whenever I want to. I even hate the Thanksgiving colors: browns and yellows, oranges and tans. They remind me of vomit or the colors of M&Ms of my youth before they introduced blue, red, and green.

So my mother called me in tears. She asked me if I cared about other people and if I realized how much people are worrying about me. This made no sense to me. Thanksgiving never made much sense to me. Families don't get along so feigning love and thankfulness once a year , to me, is hypocritical. Maybe it's because I am an only child or from a broken family but I know that I am not alone on the boat and fellow children of infidelity-trashed families don't feel the same.

But then I broke down to my mom. I told her things that I haven't told her before. About not being happy anymore. About not being able to sit back and enjoy something anymore. About how it feels that a part of me is dead, died years ago, and took every piece of humanity with it. How, at the most successful and most accomplishment-filled era of my life, I feel like a total failure.

About how I used to pull the blankets above my head when I was 10 before falling asleep and praying to God that I would die in my sleep of suffocation. And how disappointed I would be to wake up the following morning.

And then we hung up after a quick reconciliation. I guess I won any sort of argument that we may have been having because she quickly succumbed to my sudden loss of control. And now that she knows that her son is a classic Prozac case: another drug-laced, hazy-eyed, wrist-scarred zombie. She calls me once a day to check on me. Sometimes, I have the heart to answer it.

Holidays were made for phone calls, visits to the grandparents' house, perfectly cooked turkeys, laughing children, football, story-telling, significant other introducing, pumpkin pies, affection, love, family, the kids in the basement playing video games, butter soaking in a perfectly baked roll. Holidays were made for movies, television shows, stiuation comedies, stories, folktales, history books, 3rd grade art projects. Holidays were made for other people.

Out with the new: In with the old

2007-11-19T19:53:00.001-05:00

Beau came over last weekend and we ended up doing some serious damage in and around Atlanta. We began the night hanging around my house, imbibing and listening to music. We played everything from our high school years as loud as we could on my stereo without sending DVDs and CDs flying around the room. Chelsea was in New York City on business so we got to raise hell.

I remember wearing a Toad the Wet Sprocket shirt for the majority of my senior year. I had long hair and wore my hair over a bandana. I remember an intense feeling of empowerment: the time was ours, we were young, the world was about to change. The films, the music, the times, the world, was ours.

It was a time of creativity. A time when an entire generation was coming-of-age and preparing themselves to inherit the earth.

Somewhere we lost it. Maybe we lost our leader. Maybe we traded in our indivuality for careers or something else. I don't know. Thinking of it is depressing.

An old friend of mine used to say "Nostalgia is for weenies." I think it is orientating.

Graduation Gift Ideas: If Anyone Gives a Shit.

2007-11-14T20:04:00.000-05:00

1. Honda Element (orange or red - not the silver one)
2. The entire Beatles Catalog (minus Abbey Road cuz I already have it)
3. Membership to Core Decatur
4. A trip to Dollywood
5. A digital video camera
6. Vintage Star Wars figures:
Obi Wan Kenobi (brown cape)
Chewbacca
Greedo
Zucchus
Walrus Man
Lando (from ROTJ - in disguise)
Scout Trooper
Stormtrooper
Rebel Pilot (Wedge Antilles)
7. Peace on Earth
8. Gift Certificate to:
Banana Republic
Men's Wearhouse
Barnes and Nobel

Greatest Hockey Fight Ever. Much Watch Until Completion!

2007-11-13T08:25:00.000-05:00

http://view.break.com/259968 - Watch more free videos

Lom Butt Om and the Question of Quality Reassurance

2007-11-13T06:51:00.001-05:00

As I passed a student's desk yesterday during lecture, she grabbed my hand and wrote something on the back of my hand with a sharpie.

I read it and said: "Lom Butt Om?"

Unfortunately she wrote it upside down, that and her shaky handwriting made the "you" be on top appearing like a "Lom." The heart becoming two buttcheeks and the "we" held a botched "e" which looked more an "o": "om."

"No," she said. "It says, 'we love you!'."

"Hey, thanks guys," I said. "Lom Butt Om you guys too!"

I had to go to my desk and put my head into my laptop because I didn't want them to see me beaming as much as I was.

Visitors and How To Handle Them

2007-11-13T06:34:00.000-05:00

Winter in Vermont rolls in like an unwanted best friend; repulsive in demeanor, bringing forth the harshness of nature and the ferocity of mad dog, but is strangely familiar. Vermonters grow up with winter the same way we grow up with cousins, neighbors, and schoolmates: she certifies who we are, familiarity with ourselves and each other, confirming our place in the cosmos.

Winter in the South is far different. She is a nuisance as a broken leg or another crippling injury. Winter in the South creates limitations: an unwanted houseguest who refuses to leave. You can feel her beginning to crawl into your life with the first catch of your breath in the morning causing a strange stirring among the people -- they become dejected, as if the seasonal change is a punishment. Southerners become reclusive, they begin to complain of things unaccomplished through the region's supposed-deserved natural state of summer.

That's the difference between the two: to Vermonters, an annual test of wills and the struggles of life near an arctic zone make us who we are. When the snow melts and the first rays of the morning sun warm our skin, the winter season becomes another notch in the belt of our ideals: more stories to be told and we celebrate the day. Southerners take it is a temporary nuisance: a roadblock prohibiting them from doing things they wish they could.

Circular Thoughts

2007-11-06T22:03:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how things sometimes enter your life and make you question your values; or how the things that you once held so dear seem to fade away.

A person can walk up to you and, with a smile, completely cause you to re-evaluate the decisions that you have made.

All with a smile.

What do these moments do? Do they make you turn against the things that you believe in? Do they make you weaker? or show you the errors of your ways?

Or do they reinforce the things that you believe? Do you walk away from them assured that you are in the right place? It should. It does.

Because, in your head, you twist and turn the knobs. You see what you can make of it. What can be created. It forces you to the dials and revision something that is set in concrete and non-movable or malleable. In the end, it becomes nothing more than a vision: hazy and uncertain.

And all of this comes with a smile.

My Favorite Moment of Television History...

2007-10-20T17:49:00.000-05:00

Originally aired September 19th, 2001.

Seacrest Out

2007-10-13T22:59:00.000-05:00

I have officially retired from music. It is over.

When League of Evil "broke up" (or flaked out), I told friends that I was done performing on stage. The last few shows with the boys were total nightmares; we didn't get along anymore, I didn't want to see them or hear their problems, and I am sure that they felt likewise. I noticed the last six months of the band, I was trying to find subtle ways of covering thinning hair lines: comb over, hats, shaved heads in rock all equate to BALD... so what is the point.

I saw myself recording on my own from there on out. I bought some laptop music software and wrote about 15 songs, named them, recorded them to MP3 format, made a MySpace page, posted one song, let that song sit for a while, put it on a few mix CDs for people whose musical taste I trusted -- none knowing it was mine (some highlighted it as a favorite, others called it boring), stopped logging into MySpace, forgot how to use the software, and finally just plain gave up. I put an email to a friend, asking him if he wanted to get together and play some music but never got a response.

Today, when I was walking around Decatur, dodging students and pondering Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Transcendental Movement (for a class, mostly I think about girls), I got a text message from a different friend reading: HEY! CALL ME IF U WANNA MAKE MUSIC. NEW BAND 4MING! The guy still plays in a great local band, and I know that if I joined we would immediately dive into the cool club of Atlanta's clique oriented rock scene.

I deleted the text.

I retired, right there. I didn't have it in me anymore. I remember a time in my life when everything that I had in life was riding on a band: Chin Ho!. I remember believing that if the band didn't succeed, I would be destined for a barstool in Burlington for my remaining years: serving coffee or conducting telephone surveys for the rest of my life. Chin Ho! toured the country, played every major bar in the country, recorded music for labels, had songs that charted across the country and even overseas, released music used on MTV, Dawson's Creek, and numerous movies. I was able to quit my job briefly and be a touring professional musician.

It wasn't enough. I remember sitting on the set of Dawson's Creek, wondering if we would ever be successful. I remember sitting in the Elektra Records offices in NYC, awkwardly rocking back and forth in my chair, wondering what was being said on the other side of that glass door. Nothing was good enough. Nothing we did was big enough. Nothing satisfied the emptiness that I felt and the nagging feeling of total, utter failure on the horizon. I was never able to step back, look at where I was, and say: "We are doing all right."

It took me almost 6 years to stop and realize that that band was really, really good. And that we should be proud of our accomplishments. Chin Ho!'s music is in my iPod now, it makes its way to mix CDs now and again, and I find myself singng along and enjoying something that used to aggravate me to no end (I never listened to our CDs after recording them). For Christ's sake, I got to stand in a group of people with BOWIE once!!!

So, today, I officially retired from music, not just live performance, but from the whole thing, I will write and play only for my own enjoyment. My last stage performance will be at the potential Chin Ho! reunion show next year. I am not retiring because I am too old, or because I feel that I would be puting on some charade, but because I don't have to do that anymore. I accept what Chin Ho! did. I accept that what we did was good and successful. I no longer view those 5 years of my life as "wasted time" or think of us as "what should have been." Instead, it is "what we did."

And what we did was pretty good, and there is little else needed to be done.

Blood Transfers and That Beautiful Ignorance

2007-09-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

There are things that I wish I could teach them. There are life experiences that I wish they already knew. I want to tell them the things that I didn't hear when I was their age. I wish that I knew the words.

I need to put myself back 16 years and remember life before mistakes. Before errors. Before a time that I became overly protective of myself.

I need to remember this.

"Do you know how you interpret dreams? Try it in real life. What does real life mean symbolically?"

2007-09-09T22:09:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, I am supposed to go to my friend Kat's classroom with my favorite book. A student will interview me about why it is my favorite, what is it that makes it stand out above all other books that I have read, and give a brief synopsis of the storyline. To finish, they will take my picture and make a "Got Milk" style poster that they will hang around the high school to encourage our students to read beyond the classroom.

I read a book every three days; this is not of my own accord. I am finishing my Literary Criticism degree this semester: my final semester. Three literature classes and one foreign language. The literature classes are the last of a long line of a course load that has taken me well beyond my reading capabilities. I have studied literary theory (Post Colonial Theory, Feminism, Marxist Readings, and Formalism in US Literature), world literature classes (African American Studies, Indian Lit, Caribbean Lit, European Lit, and US Lit 1914-1945), to literary genre (Satire, Young Adult Lit, Business Writings, and Gothic Lit). I have studied single authors (Early Shakespearean Works, Later Shakespearean Works, The Complete Milton, and The Complete Chaucer) and even classes wrapped around two (Hawthorne and Melville).

Each class, and I did not mention them all, required a minimum of ten books and, University rules, a minimum of three essays. This means, from the classes listed above alone, I have read more than two hundred and fifty books within the last three years.

And yet, somehow, I even found time to read on my own: Life of Pi, The Professor and the Madman, Devil in the White City, The Kite Runner, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Hey Nostradamus, Monster, Friday Night Lights, Will in the World, The Stranger, and Hairstyles of the Damned to name a few.

I read, therefore I am.

So which book is my favorite? How do I separate them? Do I pick my favorite books from my schooling? If so, Sidhwa's Cracking India, Atwood's Surfacing, or Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises jump to mind. Or do I go with the classics, the things that will exist well beyond all things? The Canterbury Tales, The Divine Comedy, or The Iliad? Short story collections like Rushdie's East-West or Kafka's Metamorphosis and Other Stories? Something contemporary like the unbelievable Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - it did make me start going to dance clubs for a while? What about the companion books, the ones that give great detail of the authors who shaped our world? The Riverside Companion to Shakespeare or Milton's World? What about poetry? A Bukowski collection? What about Ginsburg? Something with "Howl" in it: the only poem to make me stand up on my chair and scream at the top of my lungs as it released some hidden demons?

How do you do this?

I carried a book called Life After God around with me for nearly three years, I gave it to people and told them they had to read it. It's a collection of short stories by Douglas Coupland, an author who I have outgrown, that wrap around a general theme that we are the first generation born without God. In the end, the finale concludes that although we were raised secular, we need God and possess God within us all. I read this book at a time that I needed to read a good book, something life changing.

I was very low in life when I picked up the book from The Crow Bookshop on Upper Church Street when I was 19 years old. I was lonely and was in a dark place. People around me were advancing and I was not. I was disconnected and disjointed; disappearing was wished for everyday. I daydreamed of standing in the middle of the highway and letting fate take its course. But some employee at the bookstore turned the spine of Life After God inward, exposing its cover: a child in a swimming pool, his head tilted backward. His eyes are closed. His face is in a state of pure relaxation as the water cools his head. I saw that cover and bought the book. I never was the same.

But I don't feel like opening myself up like that. I don't want to tell 14 year olds about the days that I thought of death on a regular basis; those days are gone now and dwelling on them is unimportant. Lonliness is universal. Patience, time, and experience, also people and places, heal our suffering. I am not the only person to be at this place; we all move on if we make it.

So I will bring in Kafka on the Shore: a book that my good friend Vickie recommended to me early in our friendship. I noticed a Shakespeare poster in her room, I said something about it, we talked about Big Bill, and she recommended Kafka to me. I never told her that I went to a bookstore that night and bought a copy of the book and read it in two days: all because I wanted to have something to talk about with her. It's a good book, a book I love dearly for the story as well as the memories it brings back of my friend now gone to bigger and better things in the Big Apple. It will also be my own personal little kick in the shins to the school for letting go a great mentor and kindred spirit.

But I will not tell them about Life After God. Those memories are mine and mine alone. But, I will tell you that this book saved my life. I was distracted for a little while from the thoughts in my head and dove into these beautiful stories of people searching for a reason to anything.

That is mine.

One Cat Has Asthma, the Other Has Herpes.

2007-09-09T22:01:00.000-05:00

The one with herpes has gunk in her eyes and has to go to the vet today. The other cat, the one with asthma, through some strange feline ability that humans will never comprehend is well aware of a potential vet trip and is hiding under the bed in a desperate attempt at self preservation. It is as if some dormant wild gene kicked into high gear: a forgotten corner of her DNA that used to tell her when a predator was in her immediate area. Somehow she knows we are going to the vet but can't tell if she is coming with us or not. Psychic Animals.

This made me think of a book that my late grandmother once gave me called Animals That Know When Their Owner Is Coming Home and Other Strange Psychic Pet Phenomena. I thought that it was a great book but I had not read it in a long time. I remembered this morning how I took it off the bookshelf about a year ago and her obituary fell out and I burst into tears because I wasn't expecting to see her that day and had not prepared for it.

Strange how cat gunk takes you to moments and emotions that you forgot.

And the Oscar for best performance of Helen Keller goes to...

2007-08-13T21:27:00.000-05:00

this woman for taking that extra step:

Open House

2007-08-09T22:37:00.000-05:00

The high school held their Freshman Open House tonight. Teachers meet and greet all incoming freshman and their parents; we stand in our doorways, smile a forced smile to all who we make eye contact with, and answer any questions we can. We are the welcoming committee: a relaxor. We set your child’s mind at ease.

“When do we get our lockers?” “Can you tell me where Mr. Billingsley’s room is?” “Where is the main office?”

We answer the ones we can and bluff our way through the ones we cannot. A teacher without an answer to your question, in a parents point of view, is a school that is disorganized and flying by the seat of its pants.

We are extensions of the school and how we act and how we are organized is representative of how the school will perform for the next 10 months.

And then there is the bitter parent, the one who feels that their kid is getting shafted. For these parents, nothing we do can be correct.

“Excuse me, Mr.” (looks at nametag) “Parizo.”

“Yes, can I help you?”

“Yes. I was wondering, where are all the Honors Freshman classes?”

(clearing throat) “All Honors Freshman students are integrated within the CP classes, all freshman students work side by side.”

“You mean, my son/daughter will be taking regular classes with… them?”

“Yes, ma’am. We feel that this will…”

“Thanks. Where is the principal?” (leaves abruptly with you mid-sentence)

These conversations occur over and over again. The same thing, reworded slightly. The bottom line is that some people feel that their kids do not belong in “integrated” classrooms. The spoiled Americans: better than everyone else.

Towards the end of the night, the forced smile becomes more difficult to muster -- my twelve hour shift has collapsed my soul. I can manage a closed mouth grin to anyone I make eye contact with. When I pass them and they are out of view, I breathe out in relief. I spotted a family standing in the hallway. They stood in a circle and quietly whispered to each other: a mother, father, and three daughters all hovering over a piece of paper, a schedule.

Somehow I pull the last piece of "teacher" out of me, approached them and said: “Hi folks, do you have any questions that I can answer?”

The father smiled and nodded. “Can you tell me what this means?” he asks me in an accent, pointing to the schedule.

RM 116 – DOMING – CIT. – FIRST BLOCK

“Sure, this first number is the classroom. Which is right here,” I say pointing to the door behind me. “Then this is an abbreviation for the teacher, Mr. Dominguez. This is an abbreviation for the class: Citizenship. And…”

“What is Citizenship?” asks the oldest of the daughters – the incoming freshman I assume. She hides behind her father’s arm.

“It’s a class about American government. How the government operates. How America, as we know it today, came to be. How it was created, the mistakes along the way as well as the successes.”

“You mean, I will be taught about the government?”

“Yes,” I say. “The class is called Citizenship because it teaches our students how to be citizens of the United States.”

The oldest daughter stepped from behind her father. “What else?” she asked me. “What else will I learn?”

I tell her about famous speeches she will learn; the people who wrote them and why they were written. About how the government functions, the roles of each branch, and responsibilities of people in power. With each comment she comes out a little further. By the end of my conversation, she is standing directly in front of me and I am telling her about Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech to the Virginia House of Commons, my personal favorite.

Her father looks me in the eye and says, “We are from Afghanistan. She has not attended school in three years.”

They are refugees from Afghanistan fleeing from the Taliban. The children have only been in America for two weeks, they know absolutely no one, and are completely scared out of their minds. My little rant about government, was this little girl’s first experience with certain freedom’s she has never experienced before – things she was forbidden to learn her entire life.

I spent the time walking around the school, showing them each room she would go to and I gave quick synopses of each class. I take her to the Art room and tell her about the projects she will be working on: painting, clay, and drawing, and I thought for sure she was going to cry.

I said my goodbyes and told them that I was looking forward to seeing her on Monday. I showed her where my office is located and that she could stop in at any time.

As I say goodbye to them, I notice that smiling is easy now. And making someone feel welcome is no longer a part of my job, but something that I can embrace for once knowing that it is pure.

Don't Worry Ma'am. I'll Save You!

2007-08-02T07:14:00.000-05:00

This is how childhood dreams crumble... (link)

New Wes Anderson Film Trailer

2007-07-25T18:47:00.000-05:00

Anderson is a genius and is the only reason why I go to the theaters besides Jedis or when robots turn into cars and jets.

Memoir (if I ever write one) Opening

2007-07-05T06:30:00.001-05:00

I was standing in church, in the middle of mass when I realized that I was going to burn in Hell for eternity. And this was no fault of my own. I could be the best goddamn Catholic on the planet but I would still be dipping my toes into the sulfuric fumes of Hades forever – that was when I figured out that it was no use. I was seven.

My damnation begins with a happy memory: my father and stepmother’s wedding ceremony. I was the ring-bearer, not a necessary role in a wedding, usually a responsibility of the best man, but if you have a shaved monkey that can be put on display for the admiration of the gallery, go ahead.

My father stuffed me into a shiny, grey tuxedo – a perfect match of his. My hair was gelled and parted to the side, a battle that would be fought my entire life until that same hair began to fade from existence. I stood in the back of the church, looking at my father and my uncle standing at the alter. A quick glance to my future step-mother brought to me an awkward smile from her lips; a sad and forced smile as if I was a reminder of my father’s past: his sins.

When the crooked finger of my future step-aunt poked me in the back, I walked down the church aisle. The “aahs” from my family, future family, and friends of my parents emanated into my soul. I breathed it deep into my lungs, my pride. I could taste it on my tongue – the incense of my college years would do the same and cause flashbacks of cheap tuxedos and the smell cheap cologne splashes among the groomsmen.

It was a Catholic wedding, meaning that my father and stepmother stood before a priest who had to rectify the wedding. They had to get his permission and one thing stood in the way – me. I was a child from a previous marriage that had to be removed from record.

Nulled.

This would make me a bastard in the eyes of my God: a lost soul without a rudder surrounded by seaworthy captains. While the other parishioners would spend eternity feeding from the teats of God and his greatness, I would be cast to the upper levels of Purgatory (if I was lucky), feeding or changing the diapers of the anabaptized babies until Jesus showed up with a “Get Out Of Eternal Suffering and the Pity of Your Peers Card” in hand.

But there I was. Seven. Standing before God, recognizing my own illegitimacy with my father in false prayer to my left and my off-key singing Irish Catholic step mother basking in His glory, a tear forming in her eye. I was a reminder of my father’s past. An error. I was nothing but a misspelling on paper without an available eraser to my new family.

There was no point in me being there, I was destined to suffering because of my father’s denial of my mother, of their once binding love, and the relationship that brought me into this world. Denied and erased. I gave up on finding God on that day when I was seven, our divide ever widening. I was looking into the closed eyes of the Jesus statue as he suffered on the cross, now he was another man, a son tricked to sacrifice himself in the name of his father.
Him. I could relate to Him. I could relate to that.

Well Diane...

2007-05-20T17:59:00.000-05:00

I just finished watching all 30 episodes of Twin Peaks. I loved this show when it was aired back in 1990-1991. My parents, being neanderthalic in their interests, hated the show and never watched it, preferring Murphy Brown or Roseanne. I used to go upstairs and watch it in their bedroom. I never really had a clue what was going on, but this time around, I am sure that I caught most of it. Although, with Lynch, complete comprehension is not necessary to enjoy his work.

On the last episode, Cooper enters The Black Lodge and meets his doppleganger who later leaves the lodge in the manifestation of "Bob" (confused?). But the thing that got me was when Cooper met Laura Palmer in The Lodge and she said: "You will not see me for 25 years." The show was cancelled during the offseason.

Does this mean that in 2016 there will be another Twin Peaks tv show or movie? I hope so.

Lynch is an artist. He does not cater to the movie companies and makes the movies that he wants to make, regardless of box office draw. He deserves to finish the story of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper.

The Boy in the Bubble and Baby with the Baboon Heart.

2007-05-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

I have noticed that a lot of my friends are overwhelmingly tired right now -- unable to function. I first noticed this change when I went back to Vermont for Thanksgiving and gathered around my old friends comparing bald spots. That was the first sign.

Next, people started making drastic decisions that cut off a certain part of their past. I guess that I did this at a young age when Chelsea and I moved to GA when I was 24 -- a place where we would not be followed. I learned from my father that people who you love sometimes stand in the way of your goals and you have no choice but to go around them, or barrel through them and that is what I did. Now, a lot more people I grew up with are doing the same.

People are moving on with their lives all around. Large uprootings. An Oedipal adventure awaits them. Most will come back someday, but the one's who succeed won't. They will stay away.

But everyone is tired - tired before anything has started. This is how we feel:

Confidence Finally

2007-05-05T11:37:00.000-05:00

I put a song that I wrote on a mix tape that I gave a student of mine without telling her that the song is something I wrote. She came up to me the other day and said her favorite song was mine. This made me feel good. Confidence.

If anyone is interested... click here.

I Learned A Lesson That Night...

2007-05-03T08:19:00.000-05:00

My bed time is 10PM. By this time, my eyes begin to get heavy, I start yawning profusely, and I begin to mentally talk myself out of setting up the coffee maker or cleaning the cats' litterbox out of exhaustion. By 10PM, I am pretty much done.

During the school year, especially during finals week, this time gets pushed back to 12 -- sometimes 1 depending on the amount of papers that I have to read. This finals season however, went without a hitch; i ended pulling only one over-nighter which is great.

However, I have found myself going to bed at 11 for the last six weeks, not because I have school work to do (which I do) and not because of insomnia (which I have usually), but because ION-TV (formerly PAX) has shown back-to-back episodes of The Wonder Years starting at 10PM.

The Wonder Years was my first television addiction (it would be Twin Peaks, but my parents stopped letting me watch it when it got to weird - i.e. good), it originally came on on Wednesdays at 8:30 followed by Doogie Howser MD which I was not a fan of. Wednesdays were the only nights of the week that I got my homework done as quickly as possible, had the chores completed on time, and made sure that no one would call me between 8:30 and 9:00.

I was 13 at the time which is the perfect age to watch The Wonder Years. I thought that the show was serendipitous: everything that happened to Kevin Arnold seemed to happen to me as well. When he tried out for baseball and kept making the cut despite his lousy performance, so did I. When he got into his first fight in the school hallways, so did I. And when he kissed Winnie -- his first french kiss -- I kissed Abby Gregory after a school dance.

For some reason, all of these episodes stuck with me. I only watched them during their original run and re-runs -- never the syndicated episodes that came on in the mid-nineties when I was totally grunged out and hated all generations but my own. Somehow, I am a walking The Wonder Years trivia encyclopedia: What was the name of Kevin's band? (The Electric Shoes). What did Kevin give Winnie for Christmas in Season One and what did she give him? (He gave her a snowglobe and she gave him a four-leaf clover). What was Kevin's first job? (Chinese Food delivery boy -- mine too, btw). What song played after Winnie's bus and Kevin's bus seperated on the highway because Winnie had transfered schools and found another boyfriend? ("God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys). Who narrated the adult Kevin Arnold voice? (Daniel Stern - the non-Joe Pesci bad guy from the Home Alone movies). What song did the eighth grade Glee Club "sing" at the Spring Sing? (Stout Hearted Men).

And to this day, I still fucking hate Kirk McRae.

But eventually the show went downhill, Fred Savage's voice got deeper than the narrator's. Winnie started to be whiney and condescending to Kevin and I began to realize that Kevin was stupid to not dump her and go after super hottie Madeline who was banging! I lost interest in the show and didn't watch the last two seasons, after they moved it to Fridays (parties were much more interesting to me at the time) and then finally the TV kiss of death: Sundays. It wasn't until the last episode that I watched a new show during its last season. Kevin and Winnie said their goodbyes to each other in a barn on a rainy night and during a slow-motion closing parade sequence, we are told that Karen settled down and had kids, his mom was still living in the old house, and Kev's dad died three years later, Wayne taking over the business.

But now, I am watching all the episodes again in order. It is fun to watch them: the emotions of being 13 come back everynight. I get nervous when Kevin and Winnie go to the make-out party, the same way I did the first time I watched it. And when Kevin hits the imaginary homerun at the end of the baseball try-out episode, I actually wish that for myself. One major difference: I find Wayne too funny and fantastic ("Hey Scrote, I heard you are going out with... Win-NAAAAAAAYYYY! So seriously, how is the Super-Cooper?") Chelsea is unintersted but giggles when the first scene comes on, the first line comes out of Daniel Stern's mouth, and I yell out the entire episode plot and outcome ("Oooooooh! This is the episode where Kevin stays after school to study for his algebra mid-term because he keeps getting C's, with Mr. Collins, who stops showing up, Kevin gets pissed and vandalizes his midterm and then his teacher dies! So, he gets to re-do it because Mr. Collins believed in him! At the end, Kevin says: 'No need to grade it, it is an A.' I love this one."To which Chelsea replies: "You love every one.")

The show taught me how to interpret symbolism, how to look beyond the information given to you and to determine what is implied rather than stated. I was 13 and was perfectly aware that each song was meant to be there -- purposefully chosen to represent something larger than the 23 minutes of TV time could. It is safe to say that my love of literature stems from this point, this TV show.

Looking back at those Wednesdays, I learned a lot about myself. And life.

Can't Make The Music To Exit My Mind...

2007-04-25T21:16:00.000-05:00

I have had this song stuck in my head for weeks now. I finally had to do some illegal downloading to get it seeing how record distributors are shite and put out bullshit records.

I thoroughly support you stealing this song from the internet; it is a fantastic ditty which I have been utilizing as a replacement for my lack of self-motivation. It makes me get up and start moving. I recommend listening to it as loud as you can and dance around your room in ecstasy -- that is the only way to appreciate Iggy anyway.

TimeTimeTimeTimeTimeTime

2007-04-22T13:48:00.000-05:00

Checklist for May:

1. Record She Kills Night After Night album - 2. Read Kafka on the Shore - 3. Demolish the backyard - 4. Buy a bike - 5. Appreciate things - 6. Speak French - 7. D-PRT checklist - 8. Plan Wes and Chris' Karaoke Extravaganza 2007! - 9. Choose a grad school: GSU, Emory, Agnes Scott. - 10. Categorize and Organize the past six years of secondary resources. - 11. Take a deep breath.

Put Max In Space!

2007-04-19T14:17:00.000-05:00

So, the wedding plans are taking off. Chelsea is currently in Vermont; she is trying on dresses and checking out weddings sites. I have basically learned to take a step back and give her some room to let her make most decisions. I am in charge of the music. That is cool with me. It is supposed to be "our" day... but let's be realistic here.

But I have my bachelor's party to plan. I know that the Best Man is supposed to do this and I am sure that he will - there will be debauchery, but I do have to appease my inner dork.

So what to do? How can I celebrate the end of my single-dom, a part of my life that I used to celebrate so much that Jef made me a tee-shirt that read: "I AM SO SINGLE," remain faithful to my fiancee but still fulfil a "guy fantasy."

Simple, my groomsmen and I are going to Space Camp.

Ends up that there is a Space Camp for Adults Program offered in Huntsville, a six day vacation where you train as an astronaut and finish your excursion with a simulated space mission. All for the very low price of $899 -- which is barely enough money for 30 minutes with two lesbian hookers (the good looking ones anyway). Some folks who are already going with me have come up with our astronaut names: Stephen is "Maverick", Blair is "Goose," and I am going to be "Buzz."

I remember crying once because my father wouldn't send me there. So, fuck it, I am going to do it now.

Funniest Home Video Ever

2007-04-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

Friday Night Lights

2007-04-14T12:07:00.000-05:00

For four months I carried 300 French flash cards around with me - whenever a free second was gained I would line up 5 or 6 cards and rattle off the answers. By the end of the second month, I had them memorized.

So I added more to the pile. My flash card stack turned into stacks - four seperate blocks of French vocab and grammar syntax that each weighed as much as a brick. I began bookmarking web pages that were study guides for French exams. I took the online assessments and after a few weeks, I began to ace them. I bought a French language CLEP practice exam book and started passing those.

As the weeks dwindled away and the "it is weeks away" changed to "it is days away" and then finally "it is hours away" I began to get nervous. People told me that I was over prepared for it; that I would pass it with no problem. The day before the exam, I added another 15 words and 10 grammar rules. Less than six hours away, I still added words and rules.

On Friday, I took the French CLEP exam: a passing grade of 62 out of 80 would exempt me from foreign language classes and would put me in position to graduate at the end of this summer. I missed by less than 5 points. Less than 20 of the words that I studied showed up on the exam, and the questions focused more on listening comprehension more than reading which was the exact opposite of what I was told in every study guide.

I sat in my car for a while in the parking garage next to the test facility. I wanted to scream, find an alley way and drink from a paper bag for the night, wake up the next day and then go home. I didn't want to see anyone or face anyone with my failure - a miserable one which prolongs my graduation for up to a year. I wanted to die where I was, throw the towel into the ring and start quitting everything.

Elsewhere in the world, my friend V was lying in a dentist's chair having her teeth ripped out of her head. Chelsea's mom was getting syringes stuck in her lower back to relieve the pains of arthiritis. Both of them were alone during their procedures and were more than likely suffering by themselves.

I thought about this, the three of us, each dealing with new levels of pain and isolation and I made a deal with myself: I would give myself one hour - and just one hour - to feel self-pity, after that, I would pick myself up and re-plan. That's what I did. I got out of my car and took a photo of the sun:

Later I called Chelsea's mom and listened to her tale. She is a brave woman who gets braver and stonger everyday, I told her that there are people in this world who are far worse off than her and me and nearly all of them will get up tomorrow morning and that is what we both need to do.

I woke up today - although I slept in later than usual.

Worst Grave Marker Ever...

2007-04-08T16:55:00.000-05:00

Reads: "You spent your life expressing animosity for nearly every person you encountered, including your children. Within hours of his death, you even managed to declare your husband of fifty-seven years unsuited to being either a spouse or a father. Hopefully, you are now insulated from all the dissatisfaction you found in human relationships.
Buddy, Jackie and Mike"

Money Well Spent

2007-04-06T16:16:00.000-05:00

It's nice to know that 5 years and $50,000 dollars worth of solid English education I can still somehow fuck up the most basic grammar rules.

I should have majored in business or something; at least my then my fuck ups would land me in prison rather than pure embarrassment.

"Your Move, Creep."

2007-04-05T08:59:00.000-05:00

How do teachers spend Spring Break? Well, for starters, we do not spend it showing our boobies or binge drinking -- ok, we don't spend it showing our boobies.

I spent mine trying to catch up in school work: finishing papers and researching new ones. I was watching The History Channel's Rome: Engineering an Empire. A chronological history of Rome and its emperors and the technological advancements made during each person's reign.

So of course the show featured professors and specialists of Rome and Roman history. The usual smear of learned peoples unloading erudite rhetoric like a well trained, well educated expert within the field. This form of intelligence is baffling to me; to be able to spew scholarly information like that is impressive to me.

Why was I so shocked when, from out of the sea of doctors and professors and scholars, came Peter Weller: aka ROBOCOP!!!!

Apparently, he is a professor at Syracuse University. How cool is that. Imagine going to your history class and Professor Robocop leads you through a perfectly delivered lesson plan.

That is what is wrong with the American Education System: not enough human cyborgs.

Everything About Neil (in the style of Brautigan).

2007-04-04T08:16:00.000-05:00

This is Neil. Neil moved to my high school our senior year from New Jersey. Our first discussion: we argued what state the Statue of Liberty was actually located in (Me: NY Neil: NJ). We immediately became best friends.

Neil had a truck. It was a black truck that was a standard transmission with no second gear. We would laugh hysterically going from first to third and screaming while the engine screamed back.

Neil changes his last name quite a bit; a phenomenon that a lot of my high school friends have done. He was Weingarten when I knew him, then he became Hannon.

Jef! and I began calling him "What's The Deal, Neil?" while in high school. To this day, we still say "Hey, I got an email from What's The Deal, Neil yesterday" whenever we talk about him.

I threw a telephone at him once. Not a light handset thing like we have these days, I am talking about one of those heavy, rotary phones where the handset and the body are attached. I hit him dead in the chest while he was lying on his back - playing with my girlfriend's hair.

Neil had it bad for Kelly. Kelly had it bad for Neil. Both showed it to each other by instigating each other viciously (He would make sexist comments and jokes to irk her feminist ways and she would tell him that the Statue of Liberty was in New York).

Neil always wore a White Sox hat. He didn't like the White Sox but he always wore that hat.

He can't say photosynthesis or photophosphorylation. We would laugh hysterically in class as he would stumble over these words, his face twisted as if he were in pain and spitting all over his desk: "Phfffsssotosinthhhphhh. Photophosssphfffforoph..." Whenever he had to read from the text outloud, he would point at me and I would read the word.

Neil loved U2. He loved Pearl Jam. We traded bootlegs of shows with each other all the time. He introduced me to a band called Jars of Clay that didn't amount to much and another one called Counting Crows who did.

He is not in our yearbook because be moved to Vermont way after our school photos were taken. For a long time, it was difficult to remember that he actually existed. It seems that only Jef!, Carrie, Kelly, and I remembered him. He moved to Colorado and got me REM tickets at Red Rocks -- a trip that I couldn't afford to go to both financially and personally.

He was gone for years. Everynow and then I would get a strange phone call from some goofball, giggling into the phone, asking me if I had Prince Albert in a can. It would be Neil. We would get reacquainted and then we would hang up and not talk for another year or two.

He helped Chelsea and I buy our house by giving us realtor information.

Neil is now married to the lovely and talented Kelly (not the high school one, that one is in New Orleans breeding like a soccer mom). They are both in Colorado and I miss them both very much. As you can see, she has great taste in baseball teams -- which offsets her taste in men.

I love Neil.

And Now For Something Uplifting...

2007-04-03T19:57:00.000-05:00

I don't know if it is his dancing, the music, or the whole concept together... but I truly love this:

Fade Out

2007-04-02T15:39:00.000-05:00

There was a kid in my third grade class named Chris Blow. Chris lived down the street from my mom and I in a tiny farmhouse that somehow survived urbanization. In his backyard there was an old chicken coop. My friends and I would hop his fence and sneak into the coop; we would play with toys or hide-go-seek in that hovel.

In hindsight, Chris had a rough life. His family was poor, obvious because he lived on the same block as us, but he was well below us on the poverty scale. He wore the same clothes everyday and would fight you at the drop of a hat. We would call him names behind his back: Chris Blow Job, Chris Blow Hard, Chris Blow Pop. But when he was near us we did our best to stay out of his way.

In the summer before I moved in with my father, I was walking through the woods and stumbled on Chris and his crony, Darian. They were throwing bottles into trees and collecting the shards of glass in a box. When they saw me, they chased me. I wasn't a fast runner so I was nabbed pretty quickly. Chris took a glass shard and stabbed me in the back of my leg.

The sight of the blood sent them scattering. I laid in the woods for awhile, crying to no one. Eventually, I had to pull the glass out of my leg. I picked myself up and stumbled home. My mom was still at work so I washed the tears off of my face in the bathroom mirror and cleaned up in the bathtub. I never told her what happened.

The other day, I told a classmate of mine this story and pulled up my leg to show the scar and found that it was not there anymore. Confused, I pulled up the other leg to see if memory was no longer serving me, but it wasn't there either. The scar had disappeared.

The scars on my hands from the time I had to defend myself from an attacking dog are still visible and the scar on my hip from a bike accident is still visible -- moved now to my upper thigh. But the one childhood story that I tell the most has no visual proof -- it has faded into oblivion.

Sometimes The Things You Do Not Want To Happen Is Best For You

2007-03-28T07:53:00.000-05:00

I had a meeting with the woman who runs Human Resources for the school system yesterday. I had questions concerning my eligibility for certification for the upcoming school year. Seeing how there are two English jobs that are open in the system, I was hoping to apply for one of them and get it.

However, I found yesterday that that is just not going to happen. Timing is all fucked up and next year's employees need to be hired a good six months before I am even eligible to apply for certification.

I feared this possibility only two weeks ago, but I was shocked at how relieved I was when I heard the news. This clears up the constraining time line that has been gettin narrower and narrower with each passing week (and weeks seem to go by real fast these days).

Suddenly, the pressure is off. I can breathe and take my time on things right now. A weight has been lifted. I still have to take the CLEP Exam in two weeks and the GACE Content Skills Exam in May, but I no longer absolutely must pass them.

HR says that I am perfectly in line to be teaching in 2008. It is almost a go. One more year and the last ten years will be justified.

Millions of Bodies Everywhere

2007-03-27T08:15:00.000-05:00

On my way to class yesterday, I drove through an accident scene. A woman riding a motorcycle was hit head on by a car. You could see the spots on the pavement that the girl bounced on; the road was dotted with red splotches, marking the points where she skipped like a stone on a calm lake.

I got there at the same time that the police did. She laid in the middle of Dekalb Ave. with her head facing towards me; her eyes were open and dead.

The last time that I saw a dead body was in New Orleans. My job put me into a bed and breakfast near Bourbon Street with other employees from around the country. A woman from Seattle stayed in a single bedroom below me. In the morning, they found her dead in the hot tub. She was epileptic and had a seizure after she said goodnight to everyone -- she drowned in the tub.

I remember giving my statement to the police in front of the bedroom door, the medics were inside the bedroom. I could see her floating in the tub from where I was standing. It was an unusually cool New Orleans morning and one of the medics said she was getting cold. Another replied, "Do you want to hop in there with her?" And they all laughed.

I barely knew her but I felt insulted. They looked at me after the comment and saw the stare that I was giving them. They stopped laughing and proceeded to pull her out of the tub. I guess that years on the job for a New Orleans ambulance crew makes you a little more than callous at dead bodies, but for me it was surreal: like I was floating outside of everything, a guest looking in at someplace that you do not belong.

Last night, at three in the morning, I had a strange dream. I woke up in near somnambulism to hear my phone chiming: noting that I have a text message. I flipped open my phone and looked at the pix message I received, closed the phone, and went back to bed. Chelsea asked: "What was it?"

I said, "Oh, it is just a photo of Vanessa with Flavor Flav."

I woke up this morning for work, remembered my dream and flipped open my phone and found this:

Your Audition Video

2007-03-24T00:37:00.000-05:00

It is nice to know that we all start somewhere. At one point, we are all bright eyed and full of life; we are all unsure of the future. We risk everything to attain greatness that we already have.

Found In An Old Notebook

2007-03-18T11:46:00.000-05:00

I am beginning the process of throwing out all my college notebooks that I no longer need, I stumbled on one from Rhetoric and Composition class. I took it in my junior year and the class was great. It was one of those classroom where you didn't need to take notes, rather the class centered around class discussions. The professor played in a punk band called The Strip Miners that I actually remember from high school -- they toured the northeast and I think that I saw them multiple times at 242, the local punk center in Vermont. Always take classes in college that are taught by former members of punk rock bands.

It was a lively group of people who said really, really funny things. Because I paid for the notebook, I just started writing down things that were said in class that interested me. I barely remember where most of them came from, but they are great. Here are some:

"How long will you sit inside of your own stomach!?! How long will you hide in your belly until you are dead!?!"

"Your brain tells you things that are lies. They are lies because there is no way to prove that it is true. What are you going to do? Argue with your brain?"

"In all honesty, you should attend your own funeral."

"Kairos: the ability to say the right thing at the right time."

"God exists no more than the person next to you. It is just as difficult to prove that your neighbor exists."

"Alright. So you've got fish sticks in this hand. And fascism in this one. Put them together and you get fascistic fish sticks."

"He is wrong and you should leave him."

"Why not? Because you look like a stooge with night goggles on; but with a cape you get respect."

Accounting Firms, the Kid from Deliverance and Leon Redbone.

2007-03-18T07:51:00.000-05:00

Last week was a rollercoaster. I think that the emotional toll it took on my friends and me will have lasting affects.

First, to make a long story short, I donated my time for a benefit for the high school's trip to Germany and nobody showed up. After having to pay the venue expense and the soundguy out of my own pocket, I went back to work expecting some sort of apology from the band director (seeing how he didn't promote the show nor let the parents know about the benefit that we did for his trip), but the bastard did not give one. In actuality, he jokingly apologized at a happy hour after work on Friday saying: "I said that I am sorrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyy!" No, he did not but it is nice to know that he is willing to save face in front of his colleagues. My hands are washed.

Chelsea clocked in over 200 hours over the past two weeks at the accounting firm; she would get up to go to work at 5:30am and not get home until 2am everyday. I can't sleep when she works late because she has to walk to her car in downtown Atlanta. So we both were suffering from sleep dep all week long.

The school announced who would be renewed next year and my good friend v didn't make the cut. I am torn on this. I have known her for less than a year, but she has become one of my favorite people on the planet. Her sense of humor is great and her smile makes me smile too. She has been pretty unhappy here sense I met her and she has been contemplating a move to NYC for a long time; the news has solidified the deal. I don't want her to go. I will miss her. But I know that there are more smiles for her up north than there are down here, and she should go wherever she must to be happy. Knowing she is smiling more often somewhere else is better than knowing she smiling sparsely here.

Dave and Raja are having a baby. Sweet. That will be the coolest kid ever.

Finally, I took one of the necessary exams for graduation/certification yesterday and felt that I did pretty well. It took nearly 5 hours to complete and was mindnumbing, but it is over. I had to drive outside the perimeter to get to the test site: something I am not fond of. It is strange, in Atlanta you can leave any art gallery or museum and drive for 10 minutes, exiting the city and find yourself in the middle of Deliverance country. There were confederate flags, "Rebel Food Outlet" signs, and billboards that read in big, bold Helvetica font: FIND JESUS.

I took the exam, numbed my brain to the point that I couldn't see clearly (literally, my eyes were out of focus) and hightailed it out of there and back to my lovely ghetto/innercity street. Leon Redbone serenaded me home.

Happy St. Patty's

2007-03-17T08:56:00.000-05:00

"Do You Believe In Miracles! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

2007-03-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

This is Michelle. She is one of my students at the high school and taught me how to play chess this semester. Michelle is a sweet girl; she is one of those students that teachers dream about. She is intelligent, witty, and just a pure joy.

Michelle has challenged everyone in the class room to a game of chess -- something that I allow during downtime. She has beaten everyone over the past three months. The more she went undefeated, the more arrogant she got. In actuality, she never got arrogant, but her self-assurance went through the roof. She stood up for herself when we talked smack and she never backed down from a challenge -- her best moment was when she challenged Kenny, a kid who talks too much, she beat him in three moves.

But today, my fellow teacher, Mr. Gathany, after three months of degradation and getting served by Michelle, beat her. This is a photo taken moments after the victory: take note of her king (white) in the back right hand corner and Mr. G's knight breathing down its neck, and no place to run with his queen able to go everywhere.

Checkmate.

It was a great run Michelle, and even though I have not been able to beat you yet, I now know you are human. If it bleeds, we can kill it.

REM's Sad Professor Lyrics

2007-03-13T21:06:00.000-05:00

If we're talking about love
Then I have to tell you
Dear readers, I'm not sure where I'm headed.
I've gotten lost before.
I've woke up stone drunk
Face down in the floor.

Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
This may be a lit invention
Professors muddled in their intent
To try to rope in followers
To float their malcontent.
As for this reader,I'm already spent.

Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
Dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
Long silence presents the tragedies
Of love. Not the age. Get afraid.
The surface hazy with attendant thoughts.
A lazy eye metaphor on the rock.

Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
I hate where I wound up.

The Ever Elusive Lauper

2007-03-12T08:47:00.000-05:00

Jef sent me the lyrics to "We Are The World" in a comment last week. I think that everyone I knew in the 80's owned this record or tape. Even my grandparents, who listened only to Frank, Dean, and the boys had the USA For Africa album sitting in their vinyl collection. I remember looking through liner notes and laughing at the thumbprint included in the "autographed" cover - all the singers signed their names and the images were replicated on every record. The thumbprint, of course, was Stevie Wonder, and at the time in my 8 year-old mind: blind people were funny (Although it must be noted that Ray Charles was also on the record but only one thumbprint was on the sleeve: therefore, Stevie Wonder is a lazy bastard).

It is impossible to read the lyrics to "We Are The World" without hearing the voice of whichever 80's icon busted out that line. From the opening "There comes a time..." that emanates from the funk-defected/easy listening embraced Lionel Richie to the the over-the-top/still high on "Born in the USA" pop fanaticism of Bruce Springsteen's chorus, the voices of the still popular (and the not so...) are immediately recalled.

And then there is Aykroyd. Aykroyd? Why Aykroyd? And I am sure that Bonnie Tyler standing next to Paul Simon is a sign of the apocalypse. And all three Pointer Sisters? Good God Man!

I finally got to read Cyndi Lauper's lyrics. I used to be able to sing every word of the song (seeing how it was played every 15 minutes on every station at the time) but the lyrics of Cyndi were obfuscated in confusion. She sings: "Well, well, well, let's realize/ That one change can only come..."

I sang this: "Ayai! Ayai! Ayai! Is a dreab alibe!/ That a cheeaige is due dee ya'all."

I came close.

Heroes Come In All Shapes and Sizes

2007-03-12T08:40:00.000-05:00

The other day I came home from work, it was pouring outside and the rainwater ripped along the sides of the streets in a raging current. When I exited my car, in the corner of my eye I saw a worm twisting and fighting the torrent; the river pulled the worm along to its fate while scraping the animals body across the innercity concrete.

When the worm rushed passed me, I dropped my laptop bag and took off down the street. I caught up to the worm, pulled it from the water and placed it in a bed of mineral-rich soil.

It was a worm.

Don't Feel Like Writing; This Made Me Laugh

2007-02-26T07:50:00.000-05:00

Circus Envy

2007-02-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

I woke up yesterday morning with the worst feeling. It seems that the moment I opened my eyes I wanted to start crying. Day four of a four day weekend, one paper to write, two books to read. The weekend was crazy. Nothing went right at all. On Friday we were in Athens and the worst feeling of dread swept through me as soon as we left the stage. I don't know what it was, just this feeling telling me to get the hell out of there. I missed my good friends' band set which sucked, but sometimes I have overwhelming urges to flee that I can't shake.

At 13 I ran away from home. They found me a few hours later about three miles away from home. All my mom said to me was, "You have the instinct to run away from problems, just like your father." The funny thing is is that I didn't feel like I was running away from something, I was running towards something -- big difference.

So on Friday night I fled, thinking that something awful was going to happen; I was informed later that the night went well after my departure to which I was happy. But Saturday was a different story: I had to get into a fight with one of good friends because he let me down - sucked all the respect and reliance right our of our relationship. In the end, his problems are his own and my problems are mine; even though his bleeds into my life, there are some things that must be said and things that shouldn't be said and I have to figure out what is what. A part of me wants to run away again, but another part wants me to stay, and neither of them seem acceptable.

Summer of 1996

2007-02-12T12:34:00.000-05:00

Lying in bed last night, a memory came back to me that I had forgotten about. In 1996, a girl broke my heart, and because she was a childhood friend of mine, she took all of my friends with her.

I spent that summer working in a toy store on lower Church Street, spending my time selling lava lamps and glow-in-the-dark stickers to UVM freshman.

I would spend my nights sitting on the church steps looking down the shopping district of Church Street eating white rice from No. 1 Chinese Restaurant. One day, a girl who shopped in my store saw and recognized me. She came up on the steps and we ate the box of rice together.

Her name was Lisa and she was a freshman on campus and very homesick. She was originally from Ohio and wanted to go home badly. She could barely function. She made no friends on campus and went to no parties.

Everynight we had an unspoken pact to meet at the church steps, each bringing our own chopsticks. We very rarely spoke, but just sat there, pleasant in someone else's company. Never talking about our sadness. Sometimes we would go see movies together, but mostly we sat and ate rice on those steps.

Our friendship ended when she stopped coming to the church steps.

I Know That I Am A Dork, But Come On.

2007-02-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

The following are the lyrics to the theme from Star Trek. I have no idea why I am posting this other than I never knew they existed:

Beyond

The rim of the star-light

My love

Is wand'ring in star-flight

I know

He'll find in star-clustered reaches

Love,

Strange love a star woman teaches.

I know

His journey ends never

His star trek

Will go on forever.

But tell him

While he wanders his starry sea

Remember, remember me.

My Name is Leslie Anne Levine

2007-02-09T22:08:00.000-05:00

V posted a whole bunch of pictures of her and her family when she was a child and living in Taiwan. The photos are great. They are weathered and in black and white; she says they haunt her when she looks at them. I can understand. They seem like they are not from another country, but another world – gazing upon them, you can imagine the people locked forever within are from any time you want them to be, and any place you want them to be from. She is the same age as me, so I know that the photos are from the late seventies, but without that knowledge, I would never be able to place them.

V remarks that, at her current age, she looks like her mother and I agree. The two women share a look in their eyes: mischievous yet intelligent, full of life and beautiful. Her mother points at the camera in one, trying to pull the attention of the baby in her arms towards the lens; her mouth is captured in the shape of a word which embodies a smile better than any smile could. She is youthful. V does look like her mother.

When I look into the mirror I see my father. He is there staring back at me. He is in my eyes as well, his bags are starting to appear under mine. My nose is crooked like his, this is not genetic, but a convergence of coincidences: two broken noses in two different lifetimes. He is also in my laugh. I hear him there too.

This is our curse: the people who we struggle to leave behind us, and someday successfully do so, will forever be there staring back at us as reminders of who we are and what we may become.

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

2007-02-05T08:40:00.000-05:00

It seems like everyone's world is falling apart around me and I can only stand and watch. I feel helpless. In the past month, there has been too numerous break ups to mention, people going on meds who never had to take them before, nervous breakdowns, and a midlife crisis.

I have had a hard time keeping things together recently; with two GACE exams, a french CLEP exam coming, and now the possibility of another GACE to pile with the others weighs me down. I have also been busting my ass trying to eliminate passive voice from my writing, which appears to be as difficult to do as quitting heroin.

I graduate this summer and have to be working full time next year or else economically I will fall apart. If I keep my current job it would be necessary to get a night job to pay the bills and college loans off. It would just be easier to find a full time teaching job.

I feel inadequate and underprepared for things right now. Last night, I dreamt that I was in front of a classroom of AP English students and couldn't speak; they stared at me like I was some idiot, like I had no business teaching them.

However, and on a better note, League Of Evil is in the middle of a creative outburst that has revitalized me. Even with the virus that is surging through my body at this moment, I am determined to make it to band practice to just play music - for the joy of it. I thought that the artist in me had died years ago, but thank God I was wrong. My good friend V told me a secret to get rid of a cold the only way a teacher can and it seems to be working. Thanks again V.

It's a balancing act, really. When one is down, the other goes up. They must be brought to equilibrium.

Bus Stop Duty Part II

2007-02-01T09:02:00.000-05:00

Georgia is getting hit with an “ice storm”; the South’s version of a winter storm is radically different than the ones that I grew up with, but still they cause damage. Power lines and trees fall regardless of national orientation, houses collapse and cars slide no matter what side of Virginia they are found. Even though Chelsea and I chuckled at the news report this morning on panicking southerners buying generators and canned food, I could empathize.

But my teacher-morning duty had me out in front of the school today despite the pouring rain and frozen temperatures; it seems that my boasts of being a native New Englander and “This-Ain’t-Winter” has landed me out front in the freezing cold. I have bus duty: state law that a faculty member must be present when the busses arrive in the morning, has to walk up and acknowledge the driver. It sucks. Especially when it rains.

So, this morning, the rain was falling, my hands were freezing, and my coffee cooled faster than any other morning. Even my favorite sign which read “EAT BUTT OLD SKOOL” was torn down, so even humor couldn’t keep me warm.

But I sat there, kept my iPod up high and hidden as usual. I noticed the phenomenon of students who shake my hands in the hallways and do the one-arm-man-hug inside the school avoid me like the plague; no one wants to be seen talking to the teacher in the morning and I understand. One teacher comes out and tries to “hang”; there seems to be a desire for some teachers today to be one of the gang, to be liked as a friend. I could care less. I would much rather yell at a kid than listen to them talk about their adolescent problems.

To make the morning worse, an illegally parked car blocked the bus stop so I had to stand out in the rain and direct the busses to another spot and the cars around the busses. Downpour. Freezing.

So this morning is a morning of suffering and the day will not cease this torment. After work, I have 25 minutes to get to class, after class I have 20 minutes to get back to the high school for Parents’ Night, and then I have 20 minutes to change, go to the practice space, pack up my gear, and go to the EARL to play a show.

Oh the sweet suffering.

So Lonely, So Lonely, So Lonelyyyyyy, So Lonely, So Lonely, So Lonelyyyyyy

2007-01-30T09:08:00.000-05:00

Pitchfork reports that The Police are reuniting for a "surprise" reunion performance at the Grammys (airing Feb. 11th).

It will be the first Grammy performance that I will watch since Metallica got snubbed for Best Heavy Metal Group for Jethro Tull back in 1989, for fuck's sake.

Rumors are abound that the band plans on a worldwide tour this summer. If this is true, then it will be the biggest stadium tour this planet has seen in years, because the world appreciates a good Sting performance where no songs written after 1987 are performed.

(insert yoga-sex joke here).

Where The Hell Did I Grow Up?

2007-01-29T09:37:00.000-05:00

Last blog of the day: Google Maps has the condo that I grew up all wrong. As a matter of fact, I don't even know if this displays my neighborhood; I can't tell. I don't remember any of this.

What the hell is happening?

The First Hour

2007-01-29T09:25:00.000-05:00

It was 19 degrees outside this morning. I bundled up as best I could. I told Blair that I think that I left my gloves in the glove compartment of my car and she responded, “You actually keep gloves in your glove compartment?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what it is there for.”

“I don’t know anyone who actually puts their gloves in the glove compartment.”

Maybe soon they will change the name of the glove compartment to the “CD Compartment”, but even that will sound dated in 5 years. Maybe they will call it the “Document Box” – or “DocBox” to be hip, seeing how that is where all your papers are. Wow. It just dawned on me how important it is to lock your glove compartment.

I was reading a past blog (oh the ego) of mine about that road in Bolivia that scares the shit out of me, and I read the part about my parents whispering downstairs and the paranoia it caused in me. What was strange about those moments wasn’t the punishment that may have been coming to me, but what they were or could possibly be saying about me; their fists were not so painful as what they said about me but not to me. Odd how that works.

I studied for nearly 13 hours over the past weekend, mostly preparing for the French CLEP that I plan on taking in April, I think that I spent only 15% of that time on actual school work – I have become quite an expert on bullshitting in my major. That is what college is about right, honing your skills as a bullshitter for four years until it is completely mastered? I took a practice exam for the PRAXIS and ended up scoring perfect in all categories except the one that I major in... huh. Anyway, I studied so much French over the last two days that I had a dream in French last night; the only problem was that I didn’t understand a word; I only knew that it was in French.

I have been inside for almost an hour now and I am finally beginning to get feelings back in my hands. A student came up to me before first bell and said, “My god, it is cold! Look at my hands.” They were red and puffy, when I showed her mine, she came back with: “You win!”

Yay, I won.

"Wouldn't It Be Nice If We Were Older?"

2007-01-29T08:42:00.000-05:00

Chelsea sang “Be True To Your School” all morning long. She said that it was stuck in her head, residuals from the last episode of Gilmore Girls that she watched before we went to bed last night. I could have made fun of her about this, I have made no qualms about covering my detest-ocity for that show, but the usual barrage of jokes at her expense that usually follow a mention of Girls was swapped with a thought.

How did Brian Wilson, lead songwriter and genius behind The Beach Boys, go from “Be True To Your School”, a crappy teen-bop toilet of a song, to write the most beautiful rock album of all time: Pet Sounds? This is shocking to me. At some point, Brian must have had some awakening; something to snap him out of childish romps of school pride or sweetheart crushes on a girl or a wave – or the two together like “Surfer Girl” – and jump to concepts of God, love, and the journey of the ego. I know that Wilson did not write all of the lyrics to the album, but even musically, Pet Sounds was an astronomic launch into songwriting perfection that is finally being recognized in today's music - lightyears beyond his early stuff which was Chuck Berry rip-offs.

My friend V is packing up her things and making the move to NYC, she will be the fourth friend of mine to make this decision in the past three years. The Previous-To-V friends all met the city with great success; each is carrying on in the direction that they desired prior to their move. Now, another is heading into the Big Apple.

Because Wilson’s metamorphosis was documented on an album to album basis, it appears that this transformation occurred overnight (overnight = a year-long period between Pet Sounds and the previous album Beach Boys' Party!), but to us all, this change seems to take forever. The day we leave childhood behind is the day that we recognize our parents to be human and allow them to make mistakes, but the day we actually start living is when we make our Pet Sounds; and I cannot wait to hear V's Pet Sounds.

Mental Bulemia

2007-01-28T16:29:00.000-05:00

Fuck it. From now on it is salads only. And 2 Guinnesses on Friday.

I feel like shit. And even Bowie isn't helping today.

Not So Fresh Feelings

2007-01-26T14:12:00.000-05:00

Can't get my thoughts organized today. There is too much stuff to do, yet I don't know where to start. You know that feeling when you are cleaning your house or room for two hours but you stop and look around and still looks like nothing has changed - it is just as cluttered as it was before? That is how I feel today.

I need a good cleaning. I need to get rid of some stuff that I don't need anymore. Not to make room for new stuff, just to feel that I have "cleaned up" a little. GSU: I ready for that to end. I look forward to the day when I get out of work and go directly home, or at least have time to do nothing before doing any obligation that I may have.

I feel like I always have somewhere else to be or to be going to at every moment of my life. I am tired of it. I am counting down the days until I am certified; at this point I estimate that I have another six months of hard labor in the college classroom before I am out. And then a year off until I start my Master's.

I have no way of ending this and I don't feel witty enough today to add links to stuff. I'm sorry. But I will say that I find it annoying when people apologize for how messy their apartment or house is and it ends up being immaculate, that makes me feel like a fucking slob.

Music Memory #1

2007-01-24T07:49:00.000-05:00

The summer of 1988 was the hottest summer Vermont had seen in years, I was 12 years old. My uncle owned a carpet cleaning business and he hired me to stick his flyers in every mailbox and door handle in Essex.

I remember filling my backpack with the paper flyers which were remarkably heavy. I threw the backpack on and headed out into the summer heat. My uncle, maybe out of pure guilt for sending his only nephew into the heat which had already killed three people that year, had bought me Guns n'Roses' Appetite For Destruction to listen to while I was sweating balls for his own monetary benefits.

I put the headphones on and marched out into the sun. When the opening riff of "Welcome To The Jungle" screamed out of the blaring headphones, I stopped and closed my eyes. Slash's delay washed guitars with Axl's low scream that resonated into a high pitched wail like a beast ready to cut your belly covered my body like a blanket.

The sweat poured down my brow and back, I squeezed my eyes as hard as I could. And when Steve Adler began bashing on his toms I began to bounce back and forth on the balls of my feet like a demented animal about to pounce, when the band launched into the song's main riff, I threw my devil sign into the air and felt what little power a 12 year old kid could.

When I opened my eyes, I realized that I was standing in the middle of traffic, the horns of the backed up cars were drowning in the music.

That was the summer I learned about the power of music, that I was willing to die for the opening of "Welcome To The Jungle" - the first song on one of the greatest rock records of all time.

"Purity, Whitman, Extra Google, and No Anchovies, please."

2007-01-23T08:49:00.000-05:00

In my Late Shakespearean Works class last night, a pseudo-intellectually challenged student raised his hand and declared that he was a "Victorian Era Poetry Purist"; this kid drives me nuts. First of all, pretty ballsy for an undergraduate to declare himself as any sort of "purist" to anything other than grilled cheese sandwiches and masturbating. My good friend Zack and I had the same student in a previous class where we called him Capt. Google because if you googled whatever we were reading, he would add to the class discussion with whatever popped up first when searched.

One day, Zack and I decided to disagree with Capt. Google on everything that he said. So when the good ol' captain announced that Leaves of Grass was the greatest piece of writing in the the 20th Century, I responded that it was the crutch that all good English Majors lean on seemingly to enhance his or her knowledge of literature and intelligence. Capt. Google responded that the text reads like the Biblical Book of Proverbs (a quick google search will tell you that Leaves of Grass is compared to Proverbs quite frequently - so Capt. didn't have that big of a revelation that a failing high school student with high speed internet couldn't find out), my friend Zack blurted out: "Proverbs Sucked!"

So when the mighty Captain pulled his balls out, plopped his sack on the desk, and announced that he was a "Victorian Era Poetry Purist" I was not shocked like the rest of my class. Instead I rolled my eyes and continued reading Twelfth Night.

What am I purist about? Maybe I am a purist for the blues. I like blues music that is stripped down and ancient; stuff that is recorded badly and is worn out and tired. The same with jazz music, so maybe I have a tinge of jazz purist in me. But more than anything, I am a pizza purist. I don't like a lot of stuff clogging up the top of my pizza. I want to see the sauce. In order to have a pizza by definition, it only requires three things: dough, tomato sauce, and cheese, everything else is an additive.

So keep the pizza pure and let's leave the thespian-based intellengcia out of the University classrooms people, you should have left that shit behind when you graduated from home schooling.

Soggies Entering My Oral Cavity

2007-01-22T14:59:00.000-05:00

I think that I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. I am pretty OCD in the morning, things have to occur in a certain order or else I get snippy.

But for some reason today, I don't have any recollection of brushing my teeth. I realized it while driving into work this morning, at the same time that I realized my breath tasted too bagel-y and Cap N' Crunch and Crunchberry-y. I have been popping gum all day and turn my head when I need to whisper in a class.

I also discovered a weird nasal click whenever I chew gum that comes and goes.

The Las Yungas Road

2007-01-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

This is the Las Yungas Road in Bolivia. I have read about it before and seen it on Discovery Channel and all that stuff, but for some reason, these photos from one of my favorite websites installed a sense of great fear in me.

I actually almost panicked, I don't know why. I do have a slight fear of heights and find myself getting a little dizzy when I am in skyscrapers or on top of a mountain, even at the escalator in the Peachtree Street MARTA station. I called Chelsea over to look at some of these and she thought that they were amazing, but did not react the same way that I did.

I keep going back online to look at these photos, each time that I do, I grip the arms of my chair trying to convince myself that I am fine. The newfound fear is addictive.

I used to fear a lot of things when I was a kid: things in my closet scared the piss out of me, people my parents knew who I didn't, and the dark. When I became a teenager I feared hearing my parents talking downstairs, paranoia siezing through my body, I would stand at the top of the stairs listening to their whispers downstairs prepared to face a punishment. In my early twenties I was plagued with nightmares where I was trying to run up a hill, my feet feeling like they were stuck in mud even though no mud was there.

I don't mind feeling fear. I actually like the sensation, the sense of eupohoria that it causes and the sublime moment of its height. It helps me recognize what else I am afraid of. I don't stop being afraid of them, but it helps me get through it.

Bus Stop Duty

2007-01-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

25 mins until they allow them in: I exit the building on time. There are a few students already there; they are the studious ones. Thier heads are buried in books or doing a panic-filled final eyeball edit of an essay or book report that is due later in the day. Some have the familiar white wire of running up their jackets connecting their iPods to their ears; their eyes closed in a state of self-hypnosis.

22 mins until they allow them in: The buses start to show up. I wave to the bus driver, a subtle "Any fights or bullshit this morning?", if they wave back they are saying "Everything is fine", if they frantically beckon me to them, I have to put on my "teacher-face" and do some paperwork.

19 mins until they allow them in: The parents start dropping them off. Some are nice cars with parents behind the wheel who are sporting a jacket and tie or business dress - a smile or wave as before the parent signals back into traffic. Others are ghetto-fabulous 1987 Buick Regals with rims and the innane screaming of a "talented hip-hop star" - the parent doesn't say goodbye, but rather speeds off before the student has time to shut the door; no reaction from the child - no communication between parent and child at all.

14 mins until they allow them in: Somehow the murder of students at the door has raged uncontrollably like an eager pot of boiling water - what was 25 to 30 kids has grown to over 100. Their cries and laughter begins to overshadow the shuffle setting of my hidden iPod. The MP3s intention was to block out their conversation. I don't want to hear what they say, mainly because I don't want to spend the day wondering whether or not what I hear should be reported or not and I'd rather not be welcome into modern high school gossip. I wave to the little old ladies who walk by in sweatsuits, glaring at the cackle of students with disgust and repulsion - "not in my days" she says to me with her eyes, pitying me and belittling my abilities as a teacher as if this is my fault.

7 mins until they allow them in: The undesirables find me. They have no friends because they are incapable of maintaining a friendship and, frankly, they are intimidating. They come over to me because they have no one else to talk to, I have to cleverly pull one concealed earphone out of my ear from under my hood just so I can keep up in the conversation which whill be a one way street to begin with. They tell me about paintball, their uncle's sniper rifle, and nunchucks, and stories about how they got mugged or how their dad chased a burglar out of the house last summer with a baseball bat, and I have to respond with "wow"or "that's crazy" - frantically looking at my watch.

3 mins until they allow them in: They start pouring out of the side streets and alley ways like biblical locusts. Kids from all walks of life, the majority of them are not wearing backpacks insinuating that they did not do any homework the night before, others are fast paced and struggling to keep their overflowed backpack and the books they carry in their numbed hands in balance.

All the kids from my high school years are there: the sixities-Kerouac-wannabe who thinks he is the only person in the world who has heard of this band called Pink Floyd, the misrepresented uptown girl whose manic clothing and make-up suggests that her too-cool-for-you expression masks her desperation-to-be-loved soul, the indie kid who thinks Radiohead is underground, the nerdy kids who talk of Battlestar Galactica and Trading Card Games - these kids will out do the rest by working for computer companies and be millionaires before they are my age. The metal kid who wears an old black Slayer shirt probably passed down to him from an older brother. And the one missing group from my high school years who is strangley absent from this one is the redneck. The redneck was who the student feared, they would fight in the hallways with anybody, in full view of a teacher, if someone else looked at them the wrong way. The redneck has been replaced by the gangstah - my old rednecks would wipe the floor with these gangstahs and I grew up in Vermont.

The bell rings: Their chatter turns to an upheaval of instinctual bellowing, like a warcry going to battle. As they pass into the school, they jump on each other, punch each other, call each other "faggot" and "niggah" and "punk." They spread themselves thin through the hallways, morph into the American high school student, becoming and behaving how we demand them to be.

I pull my earphones out of my ears. Pull my hood off my head. Breathe. And enter the school like the captain leaving the ship last.

Nice To Know Diddy and I Have Something In Common

2007-01-18T11:32:00.000-05:00

Your To Do List For Today.

2007-01-18T10:18:00.000-05:00

1. Take your age and divide it by three. Round up.

2. Go to the store and buy that many candy bars.

3. Go out to the street and give away every candy bar to random people.

4. Write down their response on seperate sheets of paper.

5. Pick the same number of random names out of the phone book.

6. Mail each person one sheet of paper with a note attached that reads: "I thought you needed to hear this."

Alice Coltrane Died Today

2007-01-18T09:49:00.000-05:00

NPR reports that Alice Coltrane, pianist for and widow of John Coltrane, died today at the age of 69. After John died she went solo and released some great music. I am sad.

listen here.

My Catholic Childhood and Love of Mexican Food Combined

2007-01-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

The Body of Christ and The Body of Christ with Con Queso, Amen.

Funniest Movie Poster Ever

2007-01-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

We Are Going To Die!

2007-01-17T12:32:00.000-05:00

The Doomsday Clock was moved forward today from 11:53 to 11:55 - two minutes until the atomic end of the world - metaphoric holocaust. When midnight comes, you won't be able to fry an egg on top of your head because your head will be flying off somewhere in the cosmos because it was vaporized.

They did this because of the "new nuclear arms race" that has been resparked by the likes of Iran and North Korea.

I remember being a child and having to do nuclear attack drills: hiding under our desks as the warheads explode over Vermont. So much trust in two pieces of wood and metal piping, to block the blast of a nuclear warhead.

The Stars Descend on 'Nawlins.

2007-01-17T08:48:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite websites, What Would Tyler Durden Do?, reports that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have bought a $3.5 million dollar home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Jolie says that they want to be full time residents and raise their kids in the New Orleans Public School System and want to meet regular moms.

I hate it when stars get all uppity like this, as if they are shining beacons of the way we should all live our lives - following their moral standards. Although I have deep respect for Jolie's adopting orphans from around the globe - even though the result is robbing them of their culture and history, the idea of two mega-stars dropping into the goddamn cesspool of frat-bastard hell and trying to blend in is ridiculous. If a celebrity really wanted to do something for the better of humanity and not for their own career, don't alert the fucking press that you are adopting or moving, just do it. Otherwise, I have to assume that your goodwill is aimed at your own personal agenda of self-promotion. I have been in New Orleans in the middle of a freakin' monsoon and I can tell you that it is not fun. And when the monsoon ends the bugs come and it gets really, really humid like your sweaty crotch in the summertime (Swamp Ass = Humid Summer + Inadequate Wiping).

I can't wait to hear how Jolie and Pitt plan on keeping the smell of piss and vomit from swaying through their windows in the Quarter - or how to stop the screaming of "Show Me Your Tits" from reaching their children's bedrooms at 3 in the morning.

Speaking of piss and vomit, American Idol's new season started last night! Did you watch it? Neither did I.

Friendship is a Transitory Art, Subject to Discontinuance Without Further Notice.

2007-01-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

Potato and Potatoe and My Inner Dan Quayle. Whatever you do with your first fraction you have to do the recipricol next. I don't care about Radcliffe nor do I want to do a presentation on her. Belki of Brown Nosing. -er, -ir, -re conjugations. Whenever the verb stem ends in y you have to add an e to the end. That's what you get for picking a sonnet that Shakespeare didn't even write. Telemachus had it all figured out, he should have let them ravage his mother. I had no idea that it would get this cold today. The pimp stole 3 lawnmowers that day. There are two types of waves in an earthquake and I don't have to teach either one of them to you. I don't mean to sound insoucient but you are an English Major, right? Do you have a headache because I farted on your toe?

Oh Happy Day!

2007-01-16T07:52:00.000-05:00

Kevin Shields, lead singer of My Bloody Valentine, has announced that it is 100% certain that the band will make a new album for 2007.

"I do feel that I will make another great record," Shields told Magnet Magazine. "We are 100% going to make another My Bloody Valentine record unless we die or something. I'd feel really bad if I didn't make another record. Like, shit, people only got the first two chapters, but the last bit is the best bit. It's just that it's taken me such an oddly long time for that to happen."

If you do not own Loveless right now, go buy it. Stop reading this. Log out. And go buy it. I will wait.

A Film By Kirk

2007-01-15T10:43:00.000-05:00

Chelsea has this love of Gilmore Girls. I can understand why she likes it: kooky, small New England town, Cool mom raising smart child with dominating grandmother. Sebastian Bach.

But honestly, I am not a fan. I think that everyone in the town is too kooky and bizarre. To me, the characters scare the crap out of me; they all talk the same and all know super obscure references that sometimes I have to explain to Chelsea. Also, the acting is horrendous. All of this makes the show repulsive to me, but Lauren Graham is superhot and does have a great ass.

However, there have been moments where I muttered a chuckle. A few lines about Hitler had me laughing, but more than anything was a character named Kirk who made an indie film. I will admit that this is genius.

Holding Out For A Hero Until The Morning Light.

2007-01-14T20:41:00.000-05:00

My good friend V has decided to quit smoking - going on a week now - and personally, I applaud her in more ways than I can express.

I hate smoking, smokers, and cigarette companies. My parents were chain smokers and I remember going to middle school and being pulled to the side by teachers and guidance counselors who would stress how dangerous smoking was; the assumed that I smoked at the tender age of 11 because I reaked from my parents. Basically, I stunk as a kid.

To be honest with you, I have never smoked a cigarette in my life. In fact, I have avoided even touching them. I despise the way they feel, smell, and I even hate the word "cigarette" - it is repulsive.

I hate the names of cigarettes: Doral, Marlboro, Viceroy, Camel, Pall Mall, Murad, and the lowest of the low, Kool. Just saying these words make me want to vomit. I also hate the way that the packages look: like some form of sophisticated, old european piece of artwork that comes off as classy as paintings of wolves howling in the desert against a sunset backdrop. I hate the word "filter" and the phrase "low tar." They drop out of my mouth like phlegm. I hate seeing black people smoke - like a Jew buying Official Nazi Brand Merchandise. I hate seeing young people smoking; you would think that they would pay just a little attention to the world. My Theory: Americans who smoke were weak or ignorant at the advent of their addiction. With age, they get smarter and stronger and that is why they try to quit(this does not include my stepmother because she won't quit due to the fact that she likes to smoke).

Mitch Hedberg said that quitting a smoking habit is as hard as starting a flossing one.

Hang in there, V. You are my hero. Try to get D to follow your lead.

"Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here."

2007-01-11T07:41:00.000-05:00

My friend Alea and I went to visit a professor on campus to inquire about a May semester trip to Italy. The study abroad is titled "Machiavelli and Dante: Together in Florence" and I am dying to go.

Six credits in the trip, a thirty page paper due before the summer semester ends. $3250.00.

I don't have the money, that sucks. To be able to travel to Florence and study Dante's Inferno in the very room of its birth is mindblowing to me. I have no money.

This is the first time that I have thought, "Why doesn't my family have money? Why don't I have the money?". I am an advocate of the unspoiled childhood; I believe that growing up without getting all desired objects is the pathway to a balanced childhood. But yet, here I am despising myself. I have a wedding to pay for, my final two college semesters, a mortgage, and the close-to-necessary need of a new car.

Now, my HOPE refund is coming and is more than enough to cover expenses, however this money is needed elsewhere at the moment: it's called eating for the next six months. I can apply for Study Abroad finanacial aid but that doesn't get issued until June - the trip is in May. Basically, I can throw all my chips on the table and go and hope to be reimbursed, but there is no guarantee that will work.

Another desire that has to be eliminated from my soul because of financial constraints; man, those Buddhists are special.

"John Holmes: The Ex-Rated Niggah" and the Sanctity of Marriage.

2007-01-10T09:46:00.000-05:00

After class last night I went and had a drink with some friends from previous semesters. There is a quaint little watering hole across from Bum Park at GSU that is obviously designed to a certain sports-loving-power-lunchers who work downtown - an offering of an after-work cocktail - but, instead, attracts a wide range of students (esp. English Majors such as myself), as well as local-downtown folks. The ESPN and piped in 80's pop dance music is usually ignored in favor of conversation of professor gossip and You-Are-Crazy-That-You-Think-Yeats-Is-Garbage!

One young lassie I met up with last night, who shall remain nameless but chooses to be addressed by her initials (hint, hint), began to talk about relationships. She was aghast that I (or anyone for that matter) would choose the marriage road over the single-and-promiscuous one. In her own words, she didn't want to be one of those people who haphazardly congratulates me but would rather be the "reliable cynic" that is in her genes.

She stated that she thinks that people who get married are out of their minds and the act is completely outdated and goes against our common animal-like passion of procreation, which, to some level, I still agree on. I find it strange and ritualistic to harness yourself to one person and to deny personal freedoms - trading in your 'fuck me card' for a leash.

I value this person's opinions and advice greatly, she is one of those individuals who I am grateful to have met in my life. However, her difference in opinion to my own is one that is very familiar to me. I don't mean this to say: "When you are young, you are stupid" - as I said earlier, I find great meaning in her opinions on this world, but something very strange happens to your values system when you begin the third decade of your life that my initialed friend hasn't experienced yet. The days of tail-chasing becomes tiring, and the full-on/fallen-short relationships and lover-status friendships that come and go like a John Holmes movies, which were so satisfying in your twenties and will always be celebrated and missed in my head, but yet seem so fragile and irrelevant.

I have hit this moment in my life where I feel like I can look back on things that I have regretted before, accomplishments and failures that I despised earlier, and the decisions that I had made previously to be ok. I can see direction for the first time in my life and actually feel like I am back on track, where previously I thought that I could never get it started again.

My friend David told me, before I proposed to my fiancee, that after you get married, you hit this stage of "everything is cool. You become ok with (the world)," and I have to say that he is right. I already feel a level of calmness and solidarity that never existed before; knowing that I have a partner through the rest of my life nearly guarantees that I will never be alone again, or atleast that I have someone who looks at me everyday and says, "Yes, I will be by your side" (I guess for as long as we can stand each other).

I will always miss the days of chasing ass through smoky bars, trying to sleep with my friends, and those awkward mornings ("Thanks for everything, but you have to go now"), but what I won't is the rejection, lonliness, and directionless-ness that plagued my life only 5 years ago. It is an even trade, and one that I don't regret.

Roprobus got Plutoed

2007-01-07T15:10:00.000-05:00

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year for 2006 is "Plutoed," referencing the recently "Astronomic Body Formerly Known as a Planet." Quite literally, and perfectly acceptable in modern conversation as such past winners as Colbert's 'Truthiness' in 2005 and 2004's most likely to stand the test of time 'Red State/Blue State,' to be 'plutoed' means to demote or devalue of something or someone.

But Pluto's demotion is worse than you think. First of all, Pluto can no longer be referred to as "Pluto" - instead, it has been granted a number by the International Astronomic Union: 134340. And no longer a planet, 134340 is now referred to as a 'dwarf planet.'

In other words, according to its numerical moniker, Pluto is now an asteroid.

Quite a demotion or devaluation. If this is meant to be the measuring stick of the phrase, to be plutoed does not entail a slight decline in honor and respect, but rather, a proverbial bitch slap that renders the receiver to the lowest point of existence: a fall from the height of being to the lowest.

The only other item in history that has been equally plutoed as Pluto would be St. Christopher. St. Christopher was once a Roman man named Roprobus who ferried people across a wild river on his large back. One day, a small child comes to him and asks for a lift. Roprobus put the small boy on his back, only to realize that the boy was far more heavy than any other person he had ever carried; the boy was the youthful Jesus Christ, whose body was weighed down by the sins of the world that he carried.

Jesus baptized the Roprobus in the river and named him "Christopher" Greek for "Christ-Carrier." Christopher then struck his staff into the earth which miraculously bloomed into a fruit bearing tree. This action angered the local Roman king who imprisoned Christopher, tortured and eventually beheaded him. He became a Christian martyr and declared a Saint sometime during the third century.

Contrary to popular belief, The Vatican never decanonized St. Christopher, however, his life is no longer celebrated as it was. In 1969, St. Christopher's Day (July 25th) was dropped off of the Roman Catholic Calendar. The reason for doing so: there is not enough evidence to back up the life of St. Christopher, i.e. it is impossible to prove he existed.

So St. Christopher got plutoed. It would have been bad enough to strip Christopher of his sainthood (even the coke snorting Miss USA was treated better), but to be denied your very existence by the very religion that celebrates your life! Insulting.

To me, Pluto is a planet regardless of what modern science says. It will always be a planet in my mind the same way that Presidents are still referred to as 'Mr. President' after they leave office and the way that a junkie will always be a junkie despite the number of years he or she has been clean. This makes me that old person who still thinks that it is ok to refer to black people as 'colored' because that was the polite way to do it when he or she was young. So be it. I can accept it.

To argue whether or not St. Christopher existed is the same argument as to whether or not Jesus existed, and the same argument of whether or not Pluto is a planet. The only answer is this: does it matter if people believe it or not and if so, what does it change? Pluto has been a planet for centuries and St. Christopher has been a Saint and source of inspiration for millions of people for over a millennia. Why change it now?

At some point, we all either get plutoed or have someone who wants to pluto us.

I pluto Pluto's plutoing.

Bonjour Mes Amis et Comment Allez Vous?

2007-01-07T10:52:00.000-05:00

Starting tomorrow, I will excuse myself from a real life once again.

Working as a high school educator during the day and then going to college at night to finish up my BA eliminates any free time that I may have; add on top of this the band that I play in and I am lucky to even find time to sleep.

This semester I have a new stressor to add to the list. For some reason, and I don't have many people to blame for this, but my student advisor and I somehow overlooked the fact that I have no foreign language credit. And now, with only two semesters left, I have to CLEP my foreign language. I would gladly just take French 2001 and 2002 seeing how I could easily test into them, however, GSU does not offer these classes at night.

The French CLEP seems to be pretty simple: you are allowed to bring in two verb reference books and you need to score higher than a 52 to obtain 2001 and 2002 credit. It should not be so hard and after a couple of months of refreshing, I could order deodorant in Paris like a true Parisian.

I took French in middle school and high school, and practiced the language throughout my early teens and early twenties when friends and I would go to Montreal to speak with interesting Canadians - you know, encouraging American Foreign Relations.

But now I am rusty, but with two French Study Guides and a CLEP practice exam under my belt, I am ready to commit. Iwill spend every night for the next three months learning French linguistic rules, learning new verbs and conjugating them. Here is a little taste of what I am capable of:

L'hippopotame est tres excitement du sexuale avec te mere.

Don't think that that will be on the CLEP though. And to be honest, I don't even know if it is correct.

RoBono Williams

2007-01-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

Rogaine Headaches and How Manly Is Erik Estrada?

2007-01-05T14:59:00.000-05:00

The first day I was told that I was losing my hair, it came from my hairdresser.

"Do you spike your hair or anything like that?" she asked me.

"No," I replied.

She crossed her arms and frowned, "Hmmmm. Well, we should start. We have to do something about that bald spot."

I vomitted in my mouth as if it were on her demand. She had me at "bald spot."

I have since experienced every stage of the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle (refer Psych 1101 college notes folks). I denied that it was happening, that somehow it would magically grow back and I would have my Leif Garrett looks again soon - like it was a phase or something. I then became angry at myself and my genes, I cursed my bald headed uncles on my mother's side and damned the one's on my father's for having more hair than I do. Once, while driving, I felt the breeze of the air conditioner lightly touching my bare scalp and I nearly ran an old woman over out of pure rage.

It is safe to say that the bargaining stage was a little odd because I told my hair (therefore, myself) that if it stopped thinning, I would only purchase the best shampoos or perhaps, no shampoo at all and let its natural oils be the enrichment that it so desires, also that I would not wear hats anymore. The first time that I ever treated a body part as a seperate entity. Depression hit hard following that - I stayed home for awhile, noticed wrinkles in the mirror that were not there the previous day and told myself that my fiancee was going to leave me.

And now the final stage: Acceptance. What a stage it is, too. I am very much settled that I will not have a full head of hair within the next 5 years; trading in my George Clooney 40-year old look-a-like dreams for a more weathered Paul Simon at 60 self-image. What will happen, will happen and there is little that I can do about it.

But I still fight a good fight, although I find it ironic that all the hair on my body that I wish I did not have (shoulders, chest, back, etc.) seems to stick around like a bad case of herpes. I started using Rogaine since they introduced the foam formula and I have to say that I have noticed a slight retardation of the thinning process. The only downfall of this is the headaches.

A Rogaine headache is not the worst type of headache, I know that migraines are far worse, but I can guarantee you that it is pretty damn close. A warning label on the can says to "keep away from women"; meaning that the astronomic dose of pure testerone you are going to pour onto your head will make your mother/wife/daughter grow a penis before sun up. All of this XY Juice is going to melt on top of your head and slowly leak its way through your epidermis, and seep into your hair folicles.

Think about it as a Defribillation System of Strumph.

So the body reacts. It reacts with a strong denial of the Liquid Macho, a war between your immune system and Erik Estrada-in-a-Bottle - resulting in a headache like a violent car crash in your head.

Advil doesn't help, neither does the pressure point therapy that I was taught by a former boss. Instead, you curl up on the couch while watching Everybody Loves Raymond and cursing men older than you who have a full head of hair - whether it is real or fake.

I am not too sure if this is acceptance; fighting your final battle in a war against the aging process, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than the previous stages. Is full acceptance when I toss the Rogaine out the window and let Mother Nature take over? I think I am allowed to fight it to the end. I think men can channel their inner Rocky Balboas with this and stand the full 12 rounds with Nature's Apollo Creed. Deal with the headaches, it is better than the drafts.

You are going to have to pry my Rogaine out of my cold, dead hands.

music videos are bad

2007-01-04T18:28:00.000-05:00

The art of the poorly made video. These are much more entertaining than anything on MTV right now (off the subject, but did anyone else catch that the new The Killers video is going backwards like in Memento? I didn't, I thought the dumb whore went back to him). From the homemade to the foreign ones, awful music videos are some of the funniest things on the planet.

Anyway, please enjoy these:

"I Wanna Love You Tender"
by Vaikiki Samua

"Losing You"
by Jan Terri

And this one seems oddly familiar:
"Gooli Madd"
by Some Indian Guy