Guts on Parade

2008-10-12T01:12:00.002-04:00

I don't pretend to know what war is like. I don't even want to know. I just know that it has its place. War is. We all fight our own wars every day and most of them don't add up to much in the grand scheme of things. But they are ours. And we fight. And we will keep on fighting whether we win or lose. The point is to fight, to follow the light, to keep on just because we know WE ARE RIGHT. God help us all in this our hour of need.

Fuck you.

2007-12-20T02:26:00.000-05:00

I sent this to AST. I hope liked it.

Guy taking a shit kills his wife by knocking her in the head with the stupid door -
by
Guts On Parade

It was one of those shits you wish you could take a picture of and send to your friends. Born of coffee and beer and cigarettes and chicken wings and the croissant you had at 11 and the chili you had last night, it was perfect. I took a drag off the one-hitter and leaned back.
WHAM! The door flies open BAM right in the fucking forehead. Fucking drunk bitch. I kick the door closed. I hear her hit the wall. Doh... Just a sound. A small sound. A sound like she'd fallen. Like a body hitting a wall. And then a sigh.
Fucking bitch. We'd been out drinking. Together, then apart, then together again. It'd been okay until the cab ride home. We got a little belligerent. It wasn't that bad, really. I thought she'd just go to sleep. That's when BAM she hit me with the fucking door. Ow. I kicked back. I was taking a shit for God's sake and I was really stoned. That’s what they don’t really get. I wasn’t even mad at her. I was pretty much over it. I just wanted her to be quiet and go to sleep.
She fell. She sighed. It was the most convincing sound I’ve ever heard. It was like, “I’m done with this, man” I expected her to come up off that floor, really hacked off, and then she’d yell at me for not helping her and I’d be stoned...
I laughed when I heard her sigh. It was the sound that everything’s okay. I wiped my ass. And washed my hands.

NOW!

2007-02-09T18:06:00.000-05:00

Chalk another one up for the Gender Equality Movement. Make that two. First, Jennifer Parcells got her 20-year-old ass zapped in the 'Raq, becoming yet another in a growing list of American female KIAs. (AGAIN proving that women do have what it takes to serve in combat. Their bodies absorb bullets and shrapnel just like those of their male counterparts!) Second, Anna Nicole died. Yay! (Dead pornstars can't undermine The Movement if they've choked to death on their own puke. Let this be a lesson to money-grubbing, pill-popping, self-hating whores everywhere...)

Will Bunch wants to know why we'll only hear about one of the above deaths on the news. I want to know why we'll never hear about any of these deaths on the news. I mean, I dig the novelty aspect of it (you know, she was a woman) and yeah, she was probably real brave and an American hero or whatever when she was catching all that lead, but, seriously, where's the fucking love for ALL the dead grunts?

I'm all for women in combat but maybe they should start marketing death to little girls like they do to little boys. You know, Combat Barbie in her Sport Up-Armored Humvee and FOB Dreamhouse. Soccer in combat boots. Pink toy guns. That's the road to real equality.

Hating the Troops

2007-02-02T11:46:00.000-05:00

What the fuck is wrong with people? I found this quite by accident and, man, are there some dumb sonsabitches running around this country. Okay, granted, William Arkin is a douchebag. When you say some dumb shit like, "So, we pay the soldiers a decent wage, take care of their families, provide them with housing and medical care and vast social support systems and ship obscene amenities into the war zone for them...", you're obviously a douche and you've never frozen your ass off in the middle of nowhere because the powers that be sent you five thousand pairs of socks instead of one parka or tried to convince some pissed-off underpaid VA nurse to let you in the hospital before you go cyclical in the town square. Eat the apple, fuck the Corps, Arkin. You're a douchebag. (Even though I do think his point re: how some of these soldiers need to quit being such whiny pussies about why they're not getting enough emotional support from the American people is a valid one. Seriously, shut the fuck up and watch your goddam sector). HOWEVER...

It's not what Arkin said that I really give a shit about, it's what transpired AFTER Arkin published his post that boggles my mind. The outpouring of redneck sentiment on how Arkin should be strung from his testicles for daring to speak his mind questioning the HOLINESS of our troops or the SANCTITY of the grunt's retard opinion on what's happening on the home front. Give me a break. I know grunts. When they're not waging war, they're sending tearful fucking e-mails back home to Mary Jane, jerking off, shooting dogs, or lighting their own farts. They're idiots. That's why they joined the Motherfucker in the first place. Patriotism, king and country, blah blah blah. Why did you join the military? Number one answer on the board: I WANT TO BLOW SHIT UP AND SHOOT HAJ. For sure, I love the dumb fuckers but, come on, nobody's gonna give Spec 4 Retard a Fulbright anytime soon. The poor bastards in the National Guard and Reserves are a different breed, I guess - they're older and wiser retards with real lives and such, I don't know. Debating the various scholarly qualifications of our nation's armed forces is not why I'm here. I'm here to gut the stupid assholes who like to call people fag and commie because they don't agree with the way shit has gone down, and to make it sound like everyone who wants to know WHAT THE FUCK is really a raghead sui-bomber with FREEDOM in the crosshairs. "The LIBERAL MEDIA is losing the war..." "When you question our policies, you embolden the terrorists..." What??? Shut the fuck up.

You know what emboldens terrorists? NOT HAVING ANY FUCKING ELECTRICITY. Stupid dipshits who can't keep their Kodak in their pocket when they're torturing people at Abu Ghraib. Rage-crazy PFC's who are so fucked up about their dead bros they go out and rape a 15-year-old girl after shooting her whole family. Trash not getting picked up for four years. Hospitals having to use Kleenex because they don't have any bandages. I mean, the idea that a bunch of fucking vegans holding Free Mumia posters and dancing in front of the National Mall somehow caused the giant shitstorm that is The Sandbox right now is absolutely retarded. Even with Arkin and the rest of the Liberal Media Establishment and the Democrats and Penn/Sarandon/Robbins et al behind them, in no way were these doofus hippies responsible for the lack of military planning, foresight, and plain goddam common sense that preceded this current clusterfuck. You wanna know what emboldens terrorists? Bush, Cheney, and the Joint Fucking Chiefs. Those are some terrorist-emboldening motherfuckers. Shit, you can show Ali Al-Qaeda an entire PowerPoint presentation of CodePink locked in an orgy with the ANSWER coalition and you won't get nearly the emboldenment than if you show him one smiling pic of W. That dude emboldens terrorists without even trying. If he really gave a shit about not emboldening terrorists, he'd do a sui-bomber number himself and take the whole White House with him.

Again, I digress. The point here is the yellow-ribboners and flag-wavers and plain dumb motherfuckers who think the world would be a better place if we all just fell into line and followed W off the cliff should really do some soul-searching before they start accusing people of not supporting the troops. I support the shit out of the troops. Do I think they're all up for sainthood? No. Do I think they're getting screwed? For sure. Do I feel sorry for them becaue they're stuck in some shithole halfway around the world because the HNIC is an idiot? Not really. After all, they signed on the dotted line. And there's always college to look forward to. No, I support the troops because why the hell wouldn't I? I don't want them to die or get blown up or see some shit that will fry their minds for all time. But I feel the best way for me to do my part to get them the fuck out of harm's way is to raise a clamor and demand accountability and, I don't know, A FUCKING PLAN from the powers that be. And I think accusing some d.b. WaPo blogger of hating the troops just because he wants G.I. Joe to show us civvies some respec' is on its face a lame-ass pussy thing to do. The real troop haters are out there but I guess it's easier to point fingers than dig for answers. So, for all of you who think that challenging your leaders is a sign of latent terroristic tendencies, let me just leave you with these final thoughts:

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. - Hermann Goering

Bitches.

Only Users Lose Drugs

2006-11-03T12:59:00.000-05:00

Austin, TX, 2001(?) - My friend, The Mysterious Mexican, and I are downtown. MG and her friend are waiting for us to go back to her place to have a few drinks and unwind after a hard night of drinking and winding. Inspiration strikes me. I turn to TMM and say, "Wanna score some crack?" MG rolls her eyes - "I'm outta here."
Of course, The Mexican is with me. He loves drugs. Especially shitty ones. And this being Austin, Red River St. is the place to be if you want to score crack. Specifically the corner of Red River and 7th where back in the day you could find almost any drug you wanted provided you wanted crack.
We're drunk. Too drunk. But onward we stumble until we happen upon a Black Guy. Of course, he has to be a drug dealer, right? "What you want?" "See, dude, I told you." My racist first impressions turn out to be correct. The guy is indeed a drug dealer. "Rock. Give me 40." The Mexican is impressed with my grasp of the lingo. He nods. He lends a certain air of criminality to the proceedings due to his brownish-ness and this puts the Black Guy at ease. He hands me two vials of crack. I hand him two folded 20s, palming them to him in some sort of white-boy dap action he at first can't figure out. He does manage however to take the money from me before he hauls ass. I look at The Mexican. "Awesome." "Let's go smoke this shit." "How do you do it?" "Hell if I know. Let's just put it in a one-hitter. I have one back at MG's." It's a plan.
We hurry away. I'm excited. Very excited. After living in Austin for most of a decade, I've finally managed to score crack off the street. It's a huge moment in my evolution as a scumbag. In my excitement, I neglect to put the vials in my pocket, preferring instead to carry them in my hand as we hurriedly cross 7th St. Then I fall down. For no reason. And the crack vials go skittering across the pavement. I'm crossing against the light, cars are coming, I'm on the ground trying to get my mind around what has just happened to me, and my crack is lying in the street. What to do, what to do...
The Mexican runs over to help me up. A lady crossing the street looks at me and my friend, looks down to the ground. "Better pick up your drugs. Cars comin'." Yes, let's pick up the drugs. We find one immediately, glittering like a diamond in the middle of the street. It screams "DRUGS! GET THEM!" The Mexican hurriedly grabs the vial much to the delight of a small crowd of onlookers who happened to be lucky enough to watch the whole thing go down. "Get it, man! Get your drugs!" "Where?" "Over there! Watch out! Cars!" I look up and see traffic bearing down on us. Where is that other vial?
"Dude, we have to go. It's gone. Let's go." I don't want to give up the hunt for my 20-rock but the honking of horns convinces me. Cops cannot be far away. In fact, there are two on horseback a block away and they seem tuned in.
We make it out of the intersection and haul ass up the street. My hands are bleeding, my jeans are ripped, The Mexican is still convulsing with laughter, but we are free.
We get back to MG's after a high-speed but ultimately uneventful drunk drive from downtown to Hyde Park. I run upstairs to get the pipe. MG: "What the fuck happened to you?" "Uh, nothing." "Why are you all bloody and why are your jeans ripped?" "Uh, I fell down." I find my pipe. "What are you doing?" "Nothing. Be right back."
I get back downstairs. The Mexican is eyeing the vial. "It's like the movies. They really put the shit in little plastic vials." "Yeah, they sell the vials at Gaspipe." "Really?!" "Yeah, man, Gaspipe sells crack vials." "That's so weird. I thought they'd be all, I don't know, anti-crack or something." "Nope. Those hippies love crack. Here let's put it in here." We load the rock into the one-hitter. I offer The Mexican the first hit. "No, man, go first. I wanna see what happens to you." I put the flame to it. Sizzle, crackle, pop, smoke - I pull hard. The taste of chemicals and burned cocaine fills my lungs. Yep, that's crack. I pass the pipe to TM.
He puts the lighter to it, draws, holds it. We exhale. He passes it back. Nothing left. "That's it." "What?" "That's it. No mas." "Really?" "Yeah." "That's fucked up." "Yeah, but I'm high."

On Insanity

2006-09-07T18:17:00.000-04:00

I think the only time I've ever really good at writing anything is when I'm totally pissed off. The good news is I'm pissed off ALOT. I try to be witty and cool and together, but really I'm just an idiot with anger management issues. To be honest, most of my anger is misdirected and really just a defense mechanism. I got picked on a lot when I was a kid and it used to make me so mad that other people could hurt my feelings so badly that I spent quite a bit of my childhood chasing other kids around with rocks, wondering why they didn't like me even as I tried to bash their brains out.
I'd like to say I grew out of my insanity; that as I matured, a more rational, compassionate aspect of my personality flowered into dominance, leaving me a well-adjusted and caring man.
But, no. That didn't happen.
I just kept getting more and more pissed off. Even as the insults stopped and the other kids became drawn to my dark and sadistic brand of humor, I still could find myself in the middle of a blind rage over the tiniest perceived slight. In short, I was, and continue to be, a huge baby.
Weird.
I really didn't see myself turning out like this. I mean, I don't chase people around with rocks anymore and I haven't thought about murdering anyone in, oh, I don't know, 5 or 6 years, but there's still this whole thing I have with "cool" people and how much I hate them. This can be a real challenge here in New York City.
Lots of stupid people think they're so cool here. And, believe it or not, this place can be a regular cauldron of rage. The good news about this joint is that I'm really good at tuning shit out. The bad news is I work in show business and it's absolutely packed to the rafters with assholes who think they're "cool."
I tend to exaggerate things in my head (because I'm fucking crazy) and I can still go off about most anything. MG bears the brunt of this (I swear, I'm like a bad movie of the week sometimes - Dwight Yoakam would play me...) but she's learned that, like a child, my bawl is much worse than my brawl and tends to ignore me most of the time and forgive me later when ignoring me proves too difficult.
Like, today, for instance. I was absolutely convinced that this chick I work with was talking shit about me. She's 22, fresh out of college, thinks she owns the place, there's no one smarter, she should be the boss - you know the type. I got on IM with the other crusty burnout I work with and launched into an extended tirade (which, regretfully, cannot be reproduced here because we both had to close our chat windows at the same time) about what a fucking stuck-up bitch she was and how dare she and I've got more smarts in the corns in my shit than she's got in her whole head, etc., etc., ad nauseum. My buddy doesn't say anything this whole time. He's just reading along, a smile playing out slowly on his face. Finally, I'm like, "What, dude? What's so fucking funny?"
"You, man. You're crazy."
"Yeah, and your point is..."
"She wasn't even talking about you. She was talking about something totally different. She likes you."
Shit.
"Really?"
"Yeah, man. She was telling the bosses how great she thinks you are."
Fuck.
"But... that's still some funny shit. You should try writing it down."
So yeah, then I feel all bad and shit, ashamed for being such a baby and assuming everything's about me. I walk around with my tail between my legs until I realize no one knows what the fuck's going on because I didn't say anything to anyone and why am I having this dialogue in my head oh yeah because I'm fucking insane. Yeah, that's pretty much my MO.

LIke you care...

2006-09-06T16:46:00.000-04:00

Well, me and MG finally found ourselves a place. It's a pretty little 1-bedroom with a big kitchen, lots o' light, a tiny living room and a study. Fourth-floor walk-up, nice building, in the same neighborhood we live now - hunky dory by most accounts. After a prolonged search, we knew finding the right digs would most likely come down to either getting lucky on Craig's List or getting raped by broker's fees. Sad to say, it was the latter. But, hell, it's only money and at least we're finally on our way to being happily situated. We learned a lot about the Brooklyn real estate market during this little venture and we learned more than we wanted to about asking fucking questions before you write the checks, but we did learn. So there's that...
God Save Brooklyn and rent stabilization. I never want to move again.

The Hick on The Hood

2006-08-17T17:10:00.000-04:00

Looking for a place to live is a bitch. For the last couple of weeks, MG and I have been up to our pearlys in this moving shit. Both of us up late at night with our laptops, alternately switching from Craigs List to Google Maps: "Where the fuck is Ditmas?" "Hell if I know... Wait. There it is. Shit. Are there even trains out there?" The more we look, the more we realize we're fucked unless we want to live in Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, East New York, Crown Heights... Any of the neighborhoods otherwise known as The Hood.

What is it about The Hood? My feelings on the subject are complicated. A mixture of fear, ignorance, and guilt, I guess. I'm no urban anthropologist, but it seems to me that the more a bunch of Park Slope rejects like myself move into traditionally working poor neighborhoods, the more landlords see dollar signs in their eyes and the more rents go up. And as those rents increase, I wonder where do these working poor (who have suddenly been priced out of what can be still be considered blighted neighborhoods) go to live? Uh... I don't know. All I know is I want a coffee shop, a Brooklyn Industries, and someone to pick up all this fucking garbage. NOW!

Also, (ouch) I'm scared of The Hood. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was my rural Texas upbringing (I didn't shake hands with a black person until I was 17 - not out of choice, I just never met a black person until I got to college); maybe it was my year of living dangerously in the Tenderloin in San Francisco (smoked so much crack I thought my head was gonna fall off); maybe I'm just an idiot. Who knows? I'm too old and too fucking slow to do the hard math that answering that kind of question would entail. Suffice it to say, The Hood scares me.

But, goddam, have you seen some of these apartments? Shit, once they get the poor people moved out, they do a regular fucking overhaul. New everything: new hardwood floors, fixtures, appliances. Want a garden? No problem. What's the most you want to pay for two bedrooms in an historic brownstone? $1200 you say? Welcome to the neighborhood. "Shit, honey, let's get this place cleaned up! We got white folk coming!" I feel like a douchebag for even getting off the train in these neighborhoods. Meeting a realtor on the street and walking around looking at places that most of the people around me still could have afforded five years ago when it was an unrenovated shithole is damn near unbearable. What with my faggy plastic glasses and messenger bag, I couldn't be more obvious. More yupped-out vanilla and Dial-soap fucking WHITE. Fear and guilt. Wicked combo. Still, those floors are beautiful and is that mahogany on the mantle...

Another reason for me to not want to live in The Hood is the fucking retard hipster whiteys who already live in these fucking neighborhoods who wear their willingness to pretend they're not exploiting the shit out of the racism inherent in a dynamic like gentrification like it's some badge of fucking honor. "Don't fucking move here, man. There's already too many of you people. Keep it real, man! For the real people!" What? Fuck you, clowns. You're just as guilty as any of us for the rents going up and Starbucks moving in. Fucking landlords don't care if you're in some band or you're an artist or an anarchist or whatever the fuck you wanna call yourself. They only know one thing - you'll pay more than the last people who lived there. A lot more. And when you're gone, the people behind you will pay even more than that...

I guess I'm just an asshole. I don't want to be. I mean, I don't want a bunch of poor people to get priced out of their neighborhoods. But what about my poor ass? I can't afford the fucking Slope anymore, that's for sure. Where am I supposed to go? Bay Ridge? Bensonhurst? Coney fucking Island? Fuck it. Maybe I should just go live in the South Slope, Sunset Park, someplace where the music has an accordion and the tortillas are fresh, somewhere where everybody's a recent arrival... I'm down with brown... Ay, guey...

These Bombs Suck

2006-08-11T09:09:00.000-04:00

(Photo: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters)

Can somebody please get Israel some bigger, more destructive bombs? Clearly the ones they're using now aren't getting the job done...

Genius...

2006-08-07T22:21:00.000-04:00

Have you ever fucked a girl so hard...

Big ups to Toilet Paper for the funniest post I've seen in a really long time...

Wow.

DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979

2006-08-07T20:48:00.000-04:00

R.I.P.
and
thanks for the best fucking concert t-shirt I own...

I'm Gonna Go to Florida... and SHOOT SOMEBODY

2006-08-07T18:59:00.000-04:00

Being a native Texan, shooting shit is nothing new to me. Blowing away critters great and small provided me with no small amount of entertainment throughout my formative years, and I remember with much fondness the many times I took aim at one or another of God's unsuspecting creatures, drawing a perfect bead on a furry head before I pulled the trigger and turned the happy bunny/fox/gopher/squirrel/bird into a fine pink mist. However, due to a set of ridiculous and, as far as I was concerned, HIPPY FAGGOT murder laws, I did always stop just short of shooting a human being. No matter what kind of asshole he/she was.
Now, with Florida's new self-defense laws, I see a way to realize my lifelong dream of shooting some motherfucker who REALLY DESERVES IT. It'll be just like that movie with Ice-T and Rutger Hauer 'cept I'm gonna have to make sure the homeless rap star I get to play the Ice-T part threatens me (or at least stiffs me on a blowjob) 'fore I blast him in the face...

teens so horny

2006-08-07T17:44:00.000-04:00

Sexual lyrics prompt teens to have sex

Also cited as leading causes of teenage sex were tits, ass, and liquor...

Search: AOL + Nuts in the Mouth + Dead Bitches

2006-08-07T16:36:00.000-04:00

AOL posted a buncha their users searches on-line and one of the users was apparently some dude who was very curious about what would pop up when you type the words "how to kill your wife" into the search engine. I decided the poor bastard was being hung out to dry -- who the hell knows what he was searching for? Maybe he heard some shit about a website, maybe he's researching a book, hell, maybe he was just fucking bored at work and wanted to know what would come up if you typed "how to kill your wife" into the AOL search engine... Whatever the hell he was doing, God forbid the day The Main Cop gets a chance to start investigating every time somebody out there types something fucked up into a search engine.

As a test to see how on his toes Big Brother actually was (and because I'm at work and bored out of my fucking mind), I typed in a buncha fucked-up shit myself into the Google search engine -- here's what I learned:

Kill My Wife -- a website for killmywife.com (not sure what the fuck I was looking at, but I didn't see any dead old ladies); a coupla joke websites; and a link to an old episode of Kojak. Shit, I can hear the Feds knocking at the door now...

Dead Bitches Everywhere -- a link to a site from somebody called Rich Little Poor Girl and Snoop Dogg

Chopped-up Bitches -- I accidentally typed in "chopped up bitces" and Google was kind enough to ask, "Did you mean chopped up bitches?" Goddam, I love the Internet...

Kill Everybody In A Fiery Blaze of Terroristic Fucking Glory -- Instapundit.com??? Shit, I felt fucked up just typing that shit in... I don't EVEN wanna know what's on Instapundit.com...

Dead Nekkid Little Kids -- Nada. Figure that's gotta be the jackpot, right? Even when I hit Images, I didn't get anything (and, believe me, my SafeSearch is OFF)...

The point is that trying to figure out what some asshole has in mind by reading his search logs is FUCKING RETARDED. Pure and simple. Granted, most people in the course of their day aren't gonna type in Kill My Wife fifty fucking times, but just cuz somebody did doesn't mean the motherfucker's actually looking to kill somebody...

Then again, it sure would be funny if the law did start reading that shit and decided to swoop in, you know looking for the bastard son of Osama Bin Laden and Richard Speck, only to find some bored 12-year-old with his Dad's AOL password...

Yr Name A Curse To Burn My Lips

2006-05-20T16:21:00.000-04:00

Suddenly staring at a field of rock and rubble,
A cry for help balanced
Trembling on my tongue,
Turned on to the smell of burning bridges
And open wounds,
I recognized you and we laughed,
Laughed like the killers we were -
The war was over,
We were never going back.

As fire rained and angels raged,
I carved out a place for you among the stones
And laid you down -
(The feel of yr ruined flesh
Beneath my fingers
The dust settling in yr unblinking eyes) -
I buried you with yr boots on,
Yr weapon locked and loaded -
You were definitely going outside the wire.

When I’d finished,
I looked at what had become of you
And felt moved to speak,
To say something profane and blasphemous,
Something to open the gates of Hell,
Something I knew you’d dig –
But shrapnel had stolen my words
And all I could do
Was bleed on yr grave.

Later, when I awoke
On clean white sheets,
The nurses’ starched cammies
Whispering along the corridors,
I reached out for you.
Finding only my knife, I smiled,
Happier than I have ever been.

Knowing what we hath wrought,
What manner of fury and firepower
We had brought to bear on this
The cradle of civilization,
Knowing that you would be forgotten
And justice,
Finally,
Would be served.

She Was Tall, 5-11 With Her Boots On

2006-05-20T15:13:00.000-04:00

Torn like taffy at the county fair,
She was busy throwing my shit off the balcony,
Mixing her tears with my dirty laundry
And pillows stained with someone else’s makeup.

Anchorwoman, what have you done?
My cries fell on deaf and battered ears,
Small canals filled to overflowing
With broken promises
Tossed like garbage from my drunken mouth.
She couldn’t believe a word I said
Until she knew I was telling her the truth.

I didn’t make a scene,
Just stood and cooed
Like some maligned pigeon.
More empties to add to the collection
Of broken things
Lying on the sidewalk
Underneath my balcony.

When she was done, crumpled and defeated,
Exhausted, spent, and utterly alone,
I reached out for her.
She recoiled in horror,
Straightened and stood,
Proud of herself for fighting back.
Some small battle had been won
Some piece of ground
Had been definitively taken.

She walked out with her head held high,
Pausing only once to kick my dirty laundry.

I saw her later that night on TV,
Calm and collected as she
Recounted the latest breaking stories.
You’d never guess where she'd been.

Search & Destroy

2006-05-14T20:38:00.000-04:00

I told you we’d be there soon,
Watched from the corner of my eye
As the life ran out of you
Making puddles of black
On the floormat
And vinyl seat covers,
Iggy & The Stooges too loud
On the stereo
A cigaret burning my fingers.

I turned left off the highway
Gunned it onto the caliche
The Mustang’s tail sliding
Sideways only to right itself
At the last second.
You didn’t look good at all
Slumped against the door
Holding your guts in with both hands.
I could smell your insides
And the stink of gunpowder
See the tiny pellets as they worked
Their way out of you
To mix with the blood and bile.

“Shit,”
You said
And you were right.

I offered you whiskey
Which you took
If only to have something to hold onto.
I thought about crying
(But only for a second)
Then changed the music
Tapping the steering wheel in time
As I pushed the needle
Into the red.

Later when I rolled you out of the car
And onto the grass,
You looked so peaceful lying there
I almost rolled out myself
To join you
To sleep the sleep of sleeps
And dream of water
While the prairie burned around us.

Drunk on the blood

2006-05-14T20:07:00.000-04:00

Of six generations of Texans
My lips are stained with Mad Dog
My teeth chatter
My skin crawls around me

High on southern hospitality
Comfort seeps from poverty's pores
And I don't pretend to understand
Anything as complex as dirt

Even though I know
This flavor, this grit
Of seedwheat in a summer Coke
Lightbroken air breathed
Through harvest filters --
I have been there

Scratched it onto tabletops
Puked it onto carpets
Tried to wash it off
Until I was pink and raw
As a barbed-wire newborn

Drunk on the sap
Of a family tree
I draw the poison out
Eversoslowly
Through the hollow end
Of a wheatstalk spike

Iktomi and The Food Stamp Incident

2006-05-14T20:04:00.000-04:00

This is from the Big Indian, Luke Warm Water. Enjoy.

They laughed when you told them yr name

2006-05-14T11:38:00.000-04:00

They screamed and cried
Did their damndest
To make you come apart
You walked the edge
Of a chainlink fence
With yr hands on fire
A smile painted on yr face
Yr guts in a brown paper bag

They broke yr favorite thing
Took from you yr hardest-won toys
Those pretty pretty boys
No kiss lasts, you said
No tide relieves me
Something as simple as flames
You broke it down
Took them to places
They never wanted to go

I see you now
On the edge of some
Inconquerable cliff
Pointing to the foam
With broken fingers
Mouthing truth
Faking it among whitecaps
Made to madden and reinvent you

Waves break because everything does
And there is no more time
In the revolver's chambers

Yr skin is someone else's leather
Stretched too tight to fit
Over hollows where bones
Don't know their place
Locked in the execution
Of half-assed pirouettes
Spun in the periphery

Ray LaMontagne

2006-05-13T04:13:00.000-04:00

The 401

2006-02-08T01:33:00.000-05:00

I used to go to this bar on the corner, the 401. Hsan, the Korean woman who owned it was a tough, little bitty thing who’d been in business in the Loin longer than most. The 401 was a dive, a dark perfect place balanced on the knife edge of violence that surrounded every aspect of life in that neighborhood. Knowing how and when to kick people out was a matter of life and death for bar owners like Hsan. People on the street killed each other all the time, usually over money, sometimes over nothing. Crackheads, hookers, pimps, dealers, the johns from the Hilton two blocks away, the cops and the paddy wagons, the roundups, the fights, knives, guns, broken bottles, a lot of crazy angry people all over the place. The whole atmosphere of that neighborhood was one of violence, a study of urban criminology, and Hsan was nothing if not a criminologist. I wasn’t sure what kind of illegal shit she was into herself but I knew she ran some kind of gambling. Not cards or dice, but more like numbers. The only people that seemed to play were old Asian women like Hsan and I think it entertained her more than it brought in money. She might’ve been the biggest madam in the Loin for all I knew. I just know she was at that bar morning, noon, and night, and from what I could tell, she was running her bar solely to inebriate a hard-core group of locals, many of whom she called friend. As much as she loved us, however, love didn’t keep that place open, the money flowing off the street did. There was always the tired pimp getting all his friends drunk on Hennesey while the girls come in to pay up or the young dealers drinking bottles of Corona while taking paper off the b-girls or the guys in the suits nobody came to see sitting in the corner nursing neat Scotches and making calls. It was all out in the open in the 401, just like it was in that whole neighborhood the entire time I lived there. I came in every day, just sat at the bar and put bread in the jar and said, “Hsan, what am I doing here?” Hsan loved me. I went in one night, nothing in my belly but the bagels I ate at work, and she gives me this huge portion of piping hot spaghetti with meatballs. “This my dinner. I give to you. You too skinny.” Just like that. No room to argue. I asked for wine. “Wine? I got special bottle for you.” She goes down to the basement and comes back with a really old bottle of Gallo. Perfect. She was so happy. I didn’t have any money to speak of, my tab was growing and way past due, but she didn’t care. She liked me. I was never, ever a problem for her. I didn’t shoot or sell drugs, I didn’t cause problems, I wasn’t a criminal. She couldn’t figure out for the life of her why the fuck I was even there. “I’m a writer.” “Why here? Go someplace nice. Go New York.” “I’m from Texas.” “Go Texas. It’s better you there.” Not mean about it, she didn’t necessarily want to get rid of me, but she understood immediately what it took me half a year to learn. I wasn’t cut out for the Loin. I didn’t belong there. I was too sensitive. Too scared. Too fucked up all the time. It was a bad combination of undesirable traits and she knew well enough to know I was in trouble from the jump. Hence, spaghetti. She couldn’t do much else for me. I might die out there but it wasn’t going to be from hunger. Not on her watch. I ate the spaghetti. Every last delicious bite. It was Prego and overcooked noodles but, to me, it was gourmet shit, best I ever had. She comped my whole bill that night. I drank the entire gallon of Gallo. She never said a word and never asked for a dime.

I don’t really remember leaving. I do remember being at the Shawmutt Hotel with my friend Jack Root, saying the most incredibly vile things to him. Telling him God knows what. I cry. He threatens to punch me, hugs me, kicks me out. I pound on his door for a minute, think better and split. I hit the street, bawling like a baby. I pass this fat, black hooker talking to her pimp. “Hey, baby… Baby, you all right? What’s wrong, sugar?” She’s nice. She looks at me. “Oh, sweetie, I know just what would make you feel better. You got any money, boy?” “Yeah. I got a lot of money. I’ve never been with a black woman before.” “Oh, honey, you ain’t lived. Let’s go. Stop crying now. Gonna make me cry, you look so bad.” “I live right here.” “Okay. Give me one second.” She talks to the gigantic black guy. I hear her say, “This won’t take long.” Thinking, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? This could take FOREVER.’ She grabs my hand and we walk to the front door of my hotel. There’s no one behind the desk. We run for the stairs and up to my room on the 4th floor. “Where’s your money?” I pull a wad of cash from the drawer. “How much you got there?” “How much am I paying you?” “125” I peel off some bills and give them to her. “You gonna feel so much better when you come, sugar. You got anything to drink?” I pour two glasses of Southern Comfort. I unbuckle my pants and pull them off. I go for her breasts. “Easy now.” I back off a little. She doesn’t use a condom as she goes down on me. I play with her tits, amazed by them, the blackness, the stretch marks, the sheer size of them. She’s a big girl all the way around. She looks up at me. “You wanna fuck me? Let’s fuck.” “Okay.” “Give me some more money.” I hand her a wad of cash. “More.” I give her more. She pulls her pants off. Hands me a rubber. I put it on. She bends over and I find my way inside her. I play with her giant black tits and fuck her giant black ass until I can’t stand up. I roll off of her. She pulls off the rubber and starts jerking me. “Let me play with those titties. Let me see those titties.” I lick and caress her tits, each one bigger than my head. I can’t believe it. She jerks me off for a while then stops. “Where’s your bathroom?” I point to the door. “And then make a left.” “I’ll be right back.” She leaves.

I wake up the next day in a panic, two hours late for my job at the bagel shop. I look on my dresser and find my wallet. Empty. I’d cashed my check the day before for over 400 dollars and she’d taken every penny. All the money I had in the world.

When I get back to the hood that night, that same hooker asks me if I want another go-round. “Maybe this time you come, right?” “Payday only comes every two weeks, baby." I hear her laughing as I walk away.

Painless

2006-02-03T01:09:00.000-05:00

When I lived in San Francisco, a guy who lived in the building behind me jumped out his 7th floor window. It was a Saturday, middle of the afternoon. Del was down the hall in the shower. We lived in a residence hotel, The Winton, on O’Farrell between Jones and Taylor. The room just had the sink, everything else was community. I was sitting at the desk, typing a letter to a friend when I heard what sounded like a gunshot. I looked out the window and there was a group of dudes in the alley, hiding behind a car. They saw me and called out, “You see anything? What was that?” I looked over to where they were pointing and there he was. Naked from the waist down, wearing a blue t-shirt, a puddle of blood forming rapidly beneath him. I screamed, “It’s a body! A dead body! Right there!” “What?! A what?!” “A dead fucking body! It’s right there! Right there!” I was freaked out, pointing frantically. I didn’t want to look but had to look, of course I had to look. I wanted to know where he came from, what floor. I looked straight up from where he lay and followed the windows to the 7th floor and sure enough, there they were, curtains flapping in the wind. No mystery to me what was on the other side of that windowsill. It was death.
Del came in. “Holy shit, holy shit. This guy just fucking killed himself. He just jumped out the fucking window.” “What? Where?” I wasn’t thinking about shielding her from anything, wanted her to be witness to it, wanted her to see his half-naked body lying in that Tenderloin alley. In one desperate move, this guy had summed up my entire San Francisco experience and I wanted her to see it.
She went to window and looked out. The blood was like an outline around him with one stream running from his feet to the nearby gutter. I couldn't see his face but the guys who’d been hiding behind the car were freaking out, alternately looking at him and then jumping away. “Shit, he is fucked up! Oh shit! Goddam!” All three had their cellphones out and it wasn’t long before an ambulance showed up and was followed by a couple of detectives and a uniform car. Del was horrified but like me, she couldn’t leave her spot by the window. One of the cops spotted us. “What did you see?” “Nothing! Just heard it and looked out! It’s the 7th floor!” “We know! Thanks!” I wished so much that I had seen it. I wanted to be more involved in this whole thing. Something I was going to exploit for the rest of my life hadn’t even really all the way happened to me. I felt gypped. I got back on my typer and told my friend what had happened. I couldn’t believe it. What luck.
Del was upset. Both by the sight of that guy’s body and my obvious excitement. “I gotta get outta here.” She brushed past me to the other side of our tiny room. “Let’s get drunk.” It was all I had. “No. I’m not getting drunk with you in the middle of the fucking day.” “That guy just exploded all over the alley.” “I know. I saw it.” She was dressed by this point. I grabbed my coat. “I’m gonna get a drink.” She stopped to look at me. “I’m just saying. That’s what I’m doing and I’d like it if I could drink with you.” “Okay. But I’m not getting drunk. I’ll leave you there.” “I know you will.”
Mr. Bing’s on a Saturday afternoon. Beats suicide every time. The light slanting in just right through the windows, cutting the smoke, more movie than real life. Jameson and Budweisers. Tom Waits on the jukebox. “I’m leaving. Be careful.” She kissed my cheek. “I’ll see you later.” I drank until there was no more light shining through the windows. Drank until I was cross-eyed. Met two Irish kids who’d had all their shit stolen. They were holed up at The Shawmut across the street from me so we took the bus back to the Loin together. I was wasted, telling’em I was gonna get’em into all these bars. They didn’t need any fuckin I.D. It was the Tenderloin, man. They said okay, they’d meet me in a few. I go upstairs and Del’s there. She’s just leaving. “Come on, Del. Let’s getta drink.” She’d had a few herself at this point. “Okay. Let’s go.” We meet the Irish kids on the street and take’em down to Eddy. They don’t get carded. We play pool until the sharks started circling. Left a big tip and moved to Jones. Hit the 311. It’s packed. The Irish can’t handle the dark, go home. Del and I dance, oblivious to our whiteness. The knife in my pocket and the pint in my pocket making me color-blind, happy to not be the guy in the alley, happy to be on the edge and not on the ground. “I gotta go. I’m sorry. You wanna come with me? Come with me.” I knew we were going to meet her boyfriend and the lesbian mafia she hung with. It was a bad idea. “Sure. Let’s go.”
In the Mission. Their apartment. Boyfriend weird about me. On the street. Lesbo friend hits me. “Go home!” Del resigned and angry. Stumble to the closest bar on Valencia. Buy a round for the house. Half my paycheck. Bartender tried to talk me out of it, then said fuck it asshole wants to give me his money shit and poured. Everyone thinks I’m a weirdo. I leave. Bus back. Pass out. Wake up when the bus driver hits me. “Get off the fucking bus!” I stumble out. Ass-end of nowhere. Long walk home. Head that way. Cutting across Polk when the Wu-Tang Clan asks me for smokes. I pull my knife and scream. “Aiaaaiiaaaaiiiaaaaa!” Then run. The Clan laughs. I decide to go the Green Door. Who doesn’t want to know what’s behind the Green Door? Make my way over to Sutton and there it is. The bull dyke behind the desk looks at me, swaying and weaving, trying to count my money. “Forty dollars for a massage.” “I got 38.” “Hang on.” Little Asian woman comes out. “Let’s go.” I follow her into the red-lit hall, there’s a bath, a shower stall, it looks dirty. I follow her into a room. She lays out a towel on a massage bench. “Take off your clothes.” I take off my clothes. “Lay down.” I lay down on my back, my boner poking up waiting for her to grab it and jerk me off for 38 dollars. She pats me on the side. “Roll over.” I roll over. “What would happen if I came here with a hundred dollars?” “You get a very special massage.” She squirts oil on my back and starts rubbing. “Could I get a blowjob?” “You get a very special massage.” “Handjob?” “Very special massage. Okay, you done.” “Okay.” I get up from my three-minute massage and put on my clothes. She walks out without another word. I part the curtains and look out into the hall. It’s some kind of hellish maze. I have no idea where to go to get out of here. There’s no one around. No noise. I turn right and walk down the hall. Dead end. Turn around and go the other way. Lost in the red maze. “Can I help you?” It’s the bull dyke. “I’m done.” “That way.” She points to the door. “Thank you.” “No. Thank you.”
I stroll into the Loin 30 minutes later and it’s late. All the decent criminals have gone home, only ones left are the crackheads, the pimps and the teenage hookers. I’m in the pizza shop and I see this one girl. Blonde. Built. “Hey.” “Hey. Wanna date?” “Yeah. How much?” “125” “It’s in my room. I live right here.” “Let’s go.” A whispered conversation with the gigantic black guy. She walks out first and I follow. She takes my arm. We walk to the hotel door. I look through the glass and see the desk clerk in the two-way mirror. “Wait.” I watch as the guy behind the desk gets up and leaves. “Let’s go.” I open the door and we run down the hallway to the stairs. We run up the stairs to the 4th floor, to my room. “Where’s the money?” I open my drawer and take out a wad of bills. I give her a few. “Got anything to drink?” I pour two glasses of Southern Comfort. She takes a sip, leans into me. “Don’t try to kiss me, don’t put your mouth on my tits and don’t get rough.” “Okay.” She pulls my pants off, unrolls a condom and goes down on me. I lean forward and play with her tits while she blows me. She lifts her shirt and bra to let me feel her. “You wanna fuck me?” I don’t know what she looks like. I can’t really see her. I know she’s white which is a first for me and I know she’s not out to kill me. “Yeah. I wanna fuck you.” “Give me some more money.” I give her a few more bills. She stands up and takes off her shirt and bra. She moves me over on the bed and sits. She takes off her shoes and pulls her pants off. “You don’t have any weapons, do you?” I pull my knife out of my pocket. “Give it to me.” I hand her the knife. She puts it behind her head without looking. She puts a fresh black condom on me and eases me into her. I’m crazy with lust but surrender to her lead, take it slow. “Go ahead.” She pulls me into her. “Come on, baby. That’s right. Fuck me, baby. Fuck me.” I quicken my pace, it’s heaven, I can’t stop, I don’t want to. “Pull out before you come, okay? Okay?” I nod. “Roll over.” “Not my ass.” “I know.” I take her from behind. She moans. I’m going to come. I can’t believe it. I’m wasted, been drinking since godknowswhen, it’s almost dawn, I’m wearing a rubber. But, it’s happening. “Okay. Okay.” I pull out of her. She rolls over quickly and pulls the rubber off and points my dick at the bedspread. “That’s it, baby. That’s right.” She milks my cock, careful to not let any of it touch her. I shudder. “Hey, that was all right. You’re a nice guy. You come find me again, okay?” She’s dressed already and at the door. “Okay. Thanks.” Out she goes.
I pick up the phone and call Delfina. “Hello?” “I just fucked a teenage whore.” “Where are you?” “At home.” “You just fucked a whore in our room? On our bed?” “Yeah. She was hot. I bent her over.” The line goes dead. I finish my drink and grab what’s left of my cash.
I’m back on the street. I walk up to the first b-girl I see. “Fitty.” I give her some bills and she whistles. Another girl comes out, throws a bag on the ground and then goes away. I pick it up and start walking back to my room. “Hey baby.” “Hey." "Wanna date?" "No. I don't wanna date. I don’t wanna fuck. I don’t have any money.” “You got rock?” "Yeah.” “Let’s go.” She takes me by the hand and leads me to a resi hotel on Polk St. As we go through the front door, the guy behind the glass makes me give him my license. I follow her to her room. “I don’t wanna fuck. You wanna get high with me, that’s cool. I’m down with that. But I’m not gonna pay you for sex, okay?” She ignores me and pulls out her works. She takes my bag and stuffs the end of her pipe full. She hits it hard, hands me the torch and the pipe. I hit it hard, hand it back. She loads it again. Hands it to me. I can’t work the torch so she does it for me. “Yeah. That’s it. Just like that.” I hit it again. I can’t see. Her bedspread is blue, the walls are green, the bed we are sitting on is soft. I lean back. She flips out. “What’re you doing?! What’re you doing?! TONY! TONY!” She’s screaming. “What? What?” I can’t figure out what the hell is going on. I freeze then remember where I am. I run for the door. Don’t stop. Nothing left behind, just run. I get to the hallway and look back. There he is. Tony. All I see is big, mean, latin, black, wifebeater, something shiny in his hand. I don’t look back again. Hit the stairs running. Is he still coming? Don’t look. Get to the desk. “Oh, so you are ready to go?” The young Iranian guy giving me shit. I look back to the stairs. Nothing. “Yeah, I’m ready. Give me my I.D., please.” He chuckles to himself, hands me my license. “Good night.”
I wake up the next day two hours late for my job at the coffee shop. Show up and my bosses want to fire me. I convince them not to, to go out, not worry about it, I’ll be fine. By 7 p.m. that night, I’m on a bus to Colorado Springs.

What would you do?

2006-02-01T23:10:00.000-05:00

Standing on the subway platform earlier playing the ol’ what-would-you-do game. What would you do if that D train just pulling in was suddenly slammed in the rear by an out-of-control B train and the whole fuckin mess jumped off the tracks and started hurtling toward you? Would you run? Duck? Hide behind the staircase, a cross-beam? Shit yourself? All of the above? What would you do if the person next to you started freaking out, having a seizure, pulled a gun? What would you do if a cab jumped up on the sidewalk and creamed eight people right in front of you? What would you do if you were one of those people? What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in the middle of a vicious crackhead claw-hammer fight? What would you do if you woke up paralyzed from the eyeballs down? What would you do if you fell down the stairs and broke your leg at 11 a.m. and there was no one in your building and you’d left your phone locked in your apartment? What would you do? Another good one I like to play is “Random Death.” Sort of a variation on the same theme but a little different. You just think about the most random ways to die you can. I came up with it when I lived in Colorado Springs. I used to live downtown and I worked at this bar down the street from my apartment and one day, I was walking to work when this truck came roaring by that had a bunch of big metal pipes sticking every which way out the back. Got me to thinking, ‘What if I hadn’t been paying attention and the guy driving the truck didn’t see me and I accidentally got too close when it was passing by and one of those pipes smashed me in the fucking head and killed me? What would that be like?’ When I got to work, I got behind the bar and got my apron and shit and was waiting for my happy-hour crowd to show up, just shooting the breeze with this guy Brett who was a cook down the street at one of the other restaurants. I told him about “Random Death” and about the truck.
“That’s the kinda shit you think about when you’re walking to work?”
“Yeah. You should try it.”
“Who thinks about that? Gimme another beer.”
Brett came in every day at 3 pm and left every night at midnight. He drank about 20 beers a night and even threw in a few random shots of Jager just to keep it interesting. He lived alone, his teeth were going, his friends had abandoned him. He wasn’t gonna die randomly. He was gonna die from liver failure and loneliness and he knew it. Then the damndest thing happened. One day outta the clear blue, Brett got himself a girlfriend. She just started coming in with him a coupla times a week. He tended to drink less when she was there and he even started coming in only a coupla times a week, too. He was in love with her. She was nice, pretty enough, a good healthy girl who liked to ride her mountain bike and hike and ski and all that shit Colorado people do. She seemed to really like Brett, too. She was always fussin over him, laughin at his jokes, hangin on him. And she was good for him. I mean, he really got his shit together. He started ridin bikes with her and hikin with her and after a few months, they looked like they were headed to the altar. I’ve rarely been so happy for a guy who was practically a stranger to me. Made me think maybe there was hope for all of us, you know?
One night, she came in just as I was closing up. I told her Brett’d already gone home but I’d get her a beer if she wanted. “Sure,” she says and takes a seat at the bar. One beer led to two and then three and then we did a coupla shots of Jag and then we decided to go out to another bar where a friend of hers was bartending and had more beers and more shots. After a few hours, I kinda blacked out. Woke up the next day on my bathroom floor with puke and piss all over me. My head was killing me and I knew I was late for work. I get up and take a shower and go to put on clean clothes and get my ass in gear and that’s when I noticed my front door. It’d been busted open with what must’ve been a crowbar. The jamb was all torn up where someone’d pried the deadbolt away from the wood. There was even a hole where they’d kicked it open and sent the knob into the wall. Immediately, like a shot to the nuts, panic set in. I started lookin around for more clues and that’s when I saw the note by the phone.
I THOUGHT YOU WERE MY FRIEND.
No name, nothing. What the fuck? I went to the mirror to inspect my face more closely for obvious damage like maybe I’d missed something in my earlier misery but I still had all my teeth, eyes, no lumps or bruises. I figured all would be made clear to me at some point so I said fuck it and went to get dressed. That’s when I saw her hair-tie thing on my nightstand. I went and smelled my pillow and checked my sheets and sure enough, she’d been there. I don’t know if I’d fucked her or not but she’d definitely been there. I couldn’t believe what a scumbag I was. Here this guy’d finally found a girl he cared about and was turning his life around and was all happy and shit, and I’d just fucked it all up for him. The only thing I could figure was someone’d seen us together at some point that night and called him and he’d come over to my house to kill us but instead of finding us in the sack together, he’d just found me on my bathroom floor covered in piss and choking on my own puke, and apparently that’s when he decided not only to not kill me but also to not let me kill myself. You know he probably hated me so much more for having to help me but I guess he didn’t hate me enough to let me choke to death on my own puke. How the hell was I going to face him? I knew I was gonna see him at some point, the town was too fuckin small for us not to see each other. What was I gonna do when I saw him? As it turns out, I never had to answer that question. Three days later, I got so drunk I blacked out again and this time when I woke up, I was in Austin, Texas.

I never went back to Colorado Springs.

Uh...

2006-01-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

Okay, I don’t know what that was. Woke up on the kitchen floor, my head glued to the linoleum and that post on my page. Guess something tripped my trigger about whatshisnuts but whatever... Thought about taking it down but decided to leave it as a cautionary tale against drunk posting -- Don’t let this happen to you. ‘Course most of you probably aren’t narcissistic rage-aholics with an unquenchable thirst for the firewater and a vocabulary consisting of nothing but four-letter words. For that, we are all grateful…

Oh, and I lied. I did start doing this for the fellowship. Went a little James Frey there with the tough guy act. Like I've said before -- I'm not really right in the head and drinking f's with my meds. Hope you're feelin' me on that...

What time is it, anyway...jesus...

2006-01-29T04:15:00.000-05:00

Guy named Offensive posted a comment on my bro’s blog Fight To Survive and I sent him a post back and I fucking well meant it. If we can’t embrace those amongst us that are most fucked up then what the fuck are we doing here? I didn’t join this goddam brigade for the fellowship, did I? No. I joined because I’m pissed. I’m pissed like Offensive is pissed. Maybe he is some right-wing joker out to have a laugh at us. Who fucking cares? All I see is words on a screen and he’s got the right to say what he wants. If any of you out there think I’m taking sides on this fucking debate, come corrected. I have only one point of view – MINE. And I’ll go toe-to-fuckin-toe, balls-to-the-wall with anyone who thinks he can change my mind about anything. Offensive’s an asshole and I’m glad he’s out there. We need more people stirring the shit. Fuck the Left and the Right and the fuckin’ Middle. I HATE EVERYTHING. Yeah, maybe the best of us have a sense of decency and a sense of tenderness and a sense of “that’s not really appropriate” but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna tell this asshole he can’t sound off. Takes a lot of weirdness to come at these guys the way he comes at them and I’m a fan of weirdness. Misguided though it might be, it never gets weird enough for me. The lunacy of it is the fucking point. Are only the ShortTimers among us supposed to survive… or not… or become acceptable victims to the miserable circumstances? I bleed for all of them, the least among them. Bring to me your idiots, your misanthropes, your duped and tired and wicked – BRING THEM. My army is comprised of the smartest AND the dumbest. The BEST and the WORST. I just hope Offensive has the balls to put his/her shit down and let us comment on his page someday and if not, then FUCK that pussy…

Hamas wins. What the fuck did you assholes think was gonna happen? Dipshits…

Oh, and another newsflash – we fucked up the Iraq reconstruction project – yeah, shoulda spent more money gettin’ the lights put back on and the water runnin’ – oops – so, we outta here yet or what?

Drunk, pissed, and no end in sight… Stay off the streets tonight cuz I’M DRIVIN’

Douglas Barber

2006-01-23T12:00:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine wrote me this morning and told me about Douglas Barber. I went online and read The Heretic’s post on Fight to Survive and it was the first thing I’ve read about it. A Lexis-Nexis search turned up zilch on the story. Big surprise there, huh? Guess some vet with a shotgun in his mouth isn't the kind of thing that's gonna get a lot of press. Still, you'd think somebody'd be paying attention. Somebody'd want to get this story out. But then again, who am I kidding? I went over this whole apathy thing a few weeks ago here and to me, it’s still the biggest problem facing this country. All these flag wavers with their yellow ribbons and there’s nobody willing to advocate for the troops. I mean, where are the suburban moms picketing the White House in the name of the vets? It’s like when you’re in theater, you’re a hero, but once you rotate stateside, you’re just another fucked-up vet no one wants to touch with a ten-foot pole. Hell, we know the cabal in Washington is responsible for getting us into this mess but where is the accountability? Where is the follow-through? WHERE IS THE GODDAM OUTRAGE? Seems to me if I’d voted for W, I’d be raising a lot more hell than the hippies about wanting to know what the fuck is going on...

Seriously, you red-state Bushbacking pricks are so fucked up. You send’em off to fight and die in your name and then when they come home, you tell’em you don’t want to hear what they have to say unless it jibes with the approved White House talking points. You’re so blinded by your nationalism and misguided loyalty to the King that you’ve chosen to ignore THE FACTS. You’ve chosen to ignore THE TRUTH. You’ve chosen to forsake the very people who do your fighting for you. How can you sleep at night knowing you’ve allowed these assholes to pull the rug out from under our veterans? How can you look yourself in the mirror every day? You maggots make me wanna puke. You think I don’t support the troops? Fuck you – YOU don’t support the troops. Because if you did, Douglas Barber and every vet like him would get top of the line psychological care when they come back; the VA wouldn’t have their budgets slashed so Uncle Sammy can save money for more bullets; guys like Rummy, Cheney, and Bush wouldn’t be allowed to run wild killing every living thing they see, enemy and friendly alike. How much blood is it gonna take for you guys to put a rein on these monsters? How long does this shit have to go on before you people start voting with some conscience?

RIP, Douglas Barber and all your bros out there who couldn't deal with The World and took that final step. You guys deserved better. On behalf of all us who were here in the rear with the beer while you were having your lives turned inside out, I’m truly and deeply sorry. It never shoulda gone down like this…

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On a different note, I saw this thing on the TV the other day how they were gonna have a blogger soldier from Iraq on CNN and I was stoked. I just knew it was gonna be somebody good, you know since the press is all lefty anti-war and whatnot. No way they were gonna put on some soldier who actually supported this thing, CNN’d blow their cover. Nopes! The guy they put on was sure enough gung-ho and go get’em and full of rah-rah spirit. So, what does this guy say when he comes on? How the press is getting it all wrong! What the…?! Dude, they put you on! How can they be getting it wrong? I mean, honestly, it didn’t surprise me that they put on some guy who was totally on-board (what’re they gonna do, put The Statistics on at 10 a.m. Sunday morning?) but then he comes out and tells them they’re not doing their jobs right. Shit, if I have to hear one more goddam time how the press isn’t telling about all the “good” things going on in Iraq… Man, the press don’t say anything they’re not handed! They’re fucking embedded! Do people really think they’re going out of their way to avoid telling us about all the schools we’re building and all the TP we’re handing out and all the totally excellent work we’re doing? That’s insane. Since when has the press not been behind this war? They helped get the ball rolling for crissake. They blew the horn and waved the flag and everything was hunky-dory until the CPA dropped the ball and the insurgency spiraled out of control and no one could get the lights on, and now suddenly the press isn’t “telling it like it is”? “The press is losing the war”? You gotta be shittin’ me…

Sometimes I think you need a degree in quantum physics to keep up with how unreal the reality of this thing is. The varying levels of idiocy, ineptitude, avarice, greed, corruption, and pure evil are astounding. Just when you think you can put a finger on one small part of what’s going on, you realize you don’t know shit. This thing is so out of control and what do we have instead of leadership? A president who’s never not on vacation and when he speaks says shit that makes absolutely no sense…

The Road to the SuperBowl

2006-01-22T18:42:00.000-05:00

20 nuclearly-hot chicken wings, a case of Bud, half a gram of Bolivian flake, two blunts of NYC Ice, and a 20-mg Vicodin for dessert – put on the big screen with the volume turned to zero, crank Helmet to 11 on the stereo, and I’m ready for some motherfuckin’ football. Not that I really give a shit one way or the other who wins (I tend to tune out once the Cowboys hang it up) but something about watching giant violent men beating each other senseless for sport while I’m completely twisted off on drugs seems so… I don’t know, American. And I don’t mean American in the geographical of-course-you’re-an-American-you-were-born-here-dipshit sense. I mean American in the kill-em-all-and-let-the-replay-sort-it-out sense. American the way war and hubris and arrogance and greed are American. Not that we got the market cornered on greed or hubris or violence but we can definitely fuck some shit up for you if you think you might need some shit fucked up. Hell, we’ll even go to the cradle of goddam civilization and bring some pee down to bear there. Won’t even look back, just lock and load, light’em up let’s move out, third and long end around touchdown, God is on our side, how can we be wrong? That’s our style, if we have a style. Shit, you can’t stop the machine. Only thing to do is keep it greased with the blood of the willing and make sure it don’t come unplugged. Football as metaphor is as played out as metaphors are in general but that don’t mean I can’t feel a rush of patriotic pride when I hear some teenage Nashville queen working her way through the Star Spangled Banner and then watch those monsters go at it. I love this fucking country.

So, my bro’s down in New Orleans building FEMA trailers for the reconstruction effort and he says it’s the new Gold Rush – they’re handing out contracts fast as they can. Build it, raze it, haul it, bring it – you got the want-to, they got the bread. He went down with a friend of his a coupla weeks ago with two pick-up trucks, a flatbed trailer, and a fifth wheel. They got some kinda fourth-generation subcontract to frame houses and they were doing two a day, making good money. Now they got a crew of 15 guys and a contract to build 20 trailers a day for a grand per. How’s that for some boot-strappin’? On a personal level, I’m happy as hell for my bro ‘cuz he’s never been anything close to rich and he’s as good a guy as I’ve ever met and his family could sure use the money. On a more objective level, I can’t help wondering who’s getting screwed on this deal. ‘Cause you know if Hally-burton’s got their paws on the project, it’s as crooked as the Mississippi is long. For every good ol’ boy like my brother making his, you know there’s some poor schmuck out there with Uncle Sam’s fist in his ass. Maybe I’m jaded but I haven’t seen anything decent or humanitarian from any of these government contract fuckers yet. I know one day we’ll wake up and the whole city of New Orleans will just be one gigantic casino and all the employees will be Hally-burton foreign nationals making 2 bucks a day and ol’ Ima Dick Cheney can just leave behind the mess in D.C. and go down to the Big Easy and get his old job back. Maybe he’ll even start some kind of employment opportunity PR thing for Iraq vets. “You havin’ trouble dealin’? Hell, we’ll teach you how to deal… and valet park.”

Went out with some bros of mine the other night and we got all fucked up. Jameson shots and Bud longnecks – too many to count and who counts that shit anyway? We stumbled out of our local Bucktown watering hole at 4 in the a.m. and the last thing I remember hearing is “Aw, hell, fuck the rest of ‘em. American Short-Timer’s the best thing I’ve read out of Iraq since the fuckin’ thing started…” Woke up the next day with my head in the vise, happy as shit I got the kind of friends who like to get drunk and talk about AST. Makes me feel kinda sorry for those that don’t…

Do Yer Part for Nashnal Sekurty

2006-01-18T01:03:00.000-05:00

Let me get this straight – I read in the papes the other day that the Eff-Bee-Eye says doing shit like tracking down the last known addresses of liberal New England schoolteachers and tracing calls from New York City cabbies to their ancestral homes in Punjab is somehow slowing down the effort to cull meaningful intel on terrorist activities in this country. To tell you the truth, I don’t know if these guys are really as far off the mark as they think they are. I mean, have you seen some of those teachers? Yikes. And don’t tell me about cabbies because I’ve been in an NYC cab going 90 miles per on the BQE while my kamikaze driver was carrying on some unintelligible klick-klack desert-speak phone call to the homeland and let me tell you, I was fucking terrorized. However, to keep it all in perspective, other than my own f-d up fear of ruler-wielding WASP schoolmarms and my occasional pant-shitting Yellow-Checkered ride home, there haven’t really been any attacks in this country since Nine-Double-One. HAVE THERE? The answer, of course, is NO. There haven’t. So, maybe what the FBI and the NSA and the CIA and the PTA and ELO and whoever else have been doing is actually working. I mean if the powers that be be tellin’ me they’re gonna protect me from those who would do me harm and no harm has really come to me, (except maybe for the time on the train when that dude kicked me in my nuts and took my iPod or when those NYU frat boys stomped me outside that 12th St. bar even though I was pretty much asking for it that time), am I right to say the powers that be are doing it wrong?

Now, common sense would tell you that all this energy might be better spent by the powers that be on, say, working up legitimate terrorist profiles on known rogue elements such as seeing if the guy in the Taliban T-shirt with the expired student visa sweating his way through Florida flight school is really just nervous about acing the big landing exam; or, say, maybe taking a peek at a couple of those thousands and thousands of unchecked cargo containers sitting unguarded on our docks to see if they contain some kind of fuck-you-up nuclear device or maybe they could spend a few hours doing something about our thousands and thousands of miles of un-patrolled border or… hell, I don’t know, ANYTHING ELSE. Common sense, however, has no place in the starched and triplicated world of American Intelligence and if you think for a minute these guys aren’t doing everything they can to keep YOU and YOUR FAMILY safe, then maybe you need a little re-education. Maybe you’re a fucking terrorist yourself and a few days at Gitmo swinging from your elbows with rabid Rottweilers snapping at your privates might help you to remember whose side you’re really on here. Get with the program, jump on the team and come on in for the big win, etc.

Domestic surveillance is just another way of sayin’ “catchin' the bad guys” so if you’re not doing anything bad, then you got nothing to worry about, Osama. That’s not to say I want them to necessarily know how many times I’m hitting BigFatTits.com every month or busting out my weed delivery man but if that’s what it takes to make sure I don’t get blowed up then that’s what it takes. Besides, how funny would it be if the Eff-Bee-Eye showed at the door and started askin’ all kinds of questions about internet porn or whether Diesel is better than NYC Ice? I could tell’em for sure that you don’t ever want to give your girlfriend’s credit card number to no BigFatTits.com and you’re way better off going for the Ice because it’s a much more mellow high, more chatty and sociable, than Diesel which’ll just sink your ass into the couch for the next six hours…

See? I got intel, bros. All kinds of useful 411 that this country needs in its War on Terror. I’m too old and crippled to enlist and I never did get no college education but that doesn’t mean I can’t make my contribution to Nashnal Sekurty. Think what all of us could do together if we really put our collective mind to it…

Shee-it.

The Big ONOFF Switch -- It Is Kaput

2006-01-16T23:10:00.000-05:00

They may hate each other but they do have at least one thing in common…

Read in the paper the other day (don’t remember which one or where but I read it so I know that shit’s true) about how USMAC-IRAQ is fueling the beef between the nationalist, straight-up anti-American, we-may-be-Muslims-but-we-don’t-want-to-sell-our-asses-to-the-Ayatollah insurgents and the hard-core, 70-virgins-in-the-Great-Beyond, I Heart Osama insurgents, and it made me think what a great fucking idea this is. Why start a civil war with a US pull-out when we can start one RIGHT NOW while we’ve still got 150-grand worth of boots in the sand? Draw-down? Draw-down some nuts in your mouth, you hippy faggots. We got front-row seats to the Mass Murder Spectacular. We’re quarterback for both teams in the world’s most dangerous pick-up game – what happens when they decide they don’t want us to play anymore for real? What happens if they decide that the time to settle their shit is AFTER they settle ours and they start working together to kill us? Not that they haven’t been hitting it from all sides the entire time but they spend a lot of energy on this whole Shia v. Sunni v. Kurd v. Yer Mama v. Whoeverthefuck tug-of-war. What happens if that energy becomes focused, coordinated, a reason to get along if only for a while? I mean, it’s a stretch – they’re some tribal motherfuckers and the grudges they got don’t recognize lines on a map. But why push’em? Do the geniuses at the Pentagram really think they’re going to be able to run it down the middle without paying for it in bodies? Do they think Kay-Da’s gonna run out of guys? Do they really think we can beat these people with Predator drones and bunker busters and hi-tech ray-guns, that our technology and know-how and gung-ho can-do corn-fed Democractic Ideology is really gonna cut it? See ya in ten years… See ya in a hundred… Never happen… Doesn’t matter when we pull the plug, sandbox is still gonna be the sandbox and whoever’s in charge will be whoever was gonna be in charge anyway and chances are it won't be Rummy's first choice...

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Wish I could shut this shit off… Think, think, over-think, think again, twice, fast, on your feet, outside the box, before you speak, before you act, of all the people living for today, of the tender things that we were working on, about puppies or flowers or little brown babies with fistfuls of chicle something nice for a change jesus you’re driving me crazy… Can’t stop the intake or the output, the ebb or tide. Nothing left for it but to ride the wave until it crests and settles on soft sandy shores stretching away into desert and sky and purple mountains majesty. Mothers can’t wait to get in, lining up for miles, swimming, rafting, flying, crawling, waiting, hell yeah we’ll go, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, coyote, Chinese captain, traders, trappers, the Tong, mules, mulas, Minutemen, inner tubes, test tubes, grow your own or import it’s really up to you. A winning ticket in the Great Ocean Lottery, suitcases filled with cocaine, Yanqui dreams of a thousand future small businesses, Open Anytime We Deliver 24-7 Camels 2 for $5 Minute Maid Orange Juice 32 oz. 4.99 Regular 278 No Bill Larger Than $20 Amerikkka the Booteefull Land of Rape and Money Coming Soon To A Theater of Operations Near You. Don’t worry about jumping the pond or the river or the line in the sand just get a job behind the wire at the closest Disneyland and it'll be like you been here all along…

Going Out of Business Sale! Get Your Abortion Now!

2006-01-13T01:28:00.000-05:00

Oh, to blow the load of all loads deep inside the Far Right and then leave them in the middle of the night while I run out for a pack of smokes for about 20 years. They're all crying and shit wanting to know "Why? How could you?" I shrug, mumble something about needing my independence and then score crack. Baby Daddy no more. Left with no options, a weepy Far Right goes to the local clinic and SURPRISE -- Adoption is a wonderful alternative! Or maybe you should've thought of that before you let that creep fuck you without any protection! 9 months down the lonesome highway and out comes Junior with a 2-pack-a-day habit, ready for the front lines in Iraq, Iran, Korea, pick an -Istan, any -Istan. Many years later, I read about my bastard child in the newspapers, feel a brief pang of conscience and then check my winning lotto numbers...

The Democratic Party should be destroyed and re-built bigger, stronger, faster, and one helluva lot meaner. Our last line of defense against the fascist right-wing and they can't even take the moral high ground when they're sitting on it. Retreat and surrender. Drop your guns and run! Whitey's coming and he looks pissed. Now, wait. Stop and pray. And make sure you tell all the flyovers how big your cross is and how you don't want the restless hippy scum to take over anymore than they do and shit, maybe those guys on the right really do have the right idea when it comes to, you know, Christianity and all that. Why do they even try to play the Jesus game when all it ever gets them is bent over at one Congressional hearing or another? Fuck Jesus. What we need now is Satan, rock-and-roll, and some good ol' fashioned righteous indignation. We need to take these worthless douchebags out to the street and curbstomp every last one of them. Don't you think if there was a Jesus and he was here right now, he'd be kicking somebody's ass? Shit, motherfucker got so pissed off about moneychangers at the temple he almost lost his spot at the Big Table in the Sky. He'd blow a gasket if he saw what was being done in his name today. Do they really think Jesus hates poor, un-educated, over-burdened, under-privileged girls? Last book I read on Jesus, they were just his kind of people. Seems to me he'd kick Pat Robertson in his nuts before he'd ever break bread with that clown. Maybe we read different Bibles at the Southern Baptist Church I went to...

Man, it is shit like this...

2006-01-10T13:43:00.000-05:00

MARINES WITHOUT ARMOR

THE NEW YORK TIMES
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006

American Marines are a proud, tough bunch. They expect to be sent into the most dangerous battles and expect enemy fighters to come at them with everything they have. But they also expect, and have every right to expect, the Pentagon to provide them with the most effective armor available to maximize their chances of staying alive and in one piece. An investigative article in Saturday's New York Times by Michael Moss makes painfully clear that the Pentagon has let these brave warriors down.

A secret Defense Department study reveals that more extensive armor, of a kind available since 2003, could have saved the lives of some 80 percent of the Marines killed by upper body wounds in Iraq between 2003 and 2005. That amounts to scores of needlessly lost lives - hundreds of Army deaths attributable to inadequate armor are counted as well. The ceramic armor plates in question cost about $260 a set.

Marines in the field have been clamoring for additional body armor (and vehicle armor) almost since the Iraq war began. Military officials initially turned them down because of concerns that the added weight might constrict movement. Once the study results came in last summer, Marine Corps leaders belatedly reversed themselves and started speeding armor to the troops.

Still, as of last month, less than 10 percent of the 28,000 sets of armor plates on order had actually reached the Marines in Iraq.

Similar delays have plagued deliveries of improved vehicle armor. And the much larger Army contingent in Iraq has faced even more extensive delays.

The Pentagon buys some truly wondrous space-age weaponry with its half-trillion-dollar annual budgets. If the Cold War ever resumes, the American military will certainly be prepared. Meantime, surely enough spare change can be found in that vast budget to accelerate deliveries of lifesaving armor to the Marines and soldiers coming under fire today, and every day, in Iraq.

Nice, huh?

Dear American Soldier,
Thanks for signing up and volunteering your strong, young American body and mind for the ready defense of your country. In honor of your sacrifice, I decided the least I could do would be to send you to fight with about half the shit you need including, but not limited to, armor for your body and trucks and enough guys to get the job done. Never mind that I’ve managed to totally fuck this up from the get-go and I’ve got you playing super-cop in the middle of some bullshit 1,000-year-old Islamic pissing match. You just need to get out there and catch a few for the folks back home and stop bitching about getting out. If you have any problems, please feel free to go fuck yourself.
Hoo-ah!
Uncle Sam

I know it’s nothing new to the guys on the ground but I wonder sometimes how clear it is to Carl & Cindy Citizen watching some CNN crawl during Anderson Cooper about another (or two or a dozen) American soldier getting killed that what we as a country, with all of our yellow ribbons and flappin’ flags and heartfelt speeches, are doing to our own soldiers is so fucked up, it defies logic. Soldiers from the dawn of time are used to getting the shit end of the stick but does that make it okay for us as civilians to say, “Eh, they knew what they were getting into. They’re tough, right? Shit, they probably love it. Gettin’ to fight in a real war? Man, they’re lucky is what they are. Armor’s for pussies. American boys don’t need armor. They’ve got DEMOCRACY, FREEDOM, and LITTLE BABY JESUS on their side. Towelhead motherfuckers don’t stand a chance. Get some, Johnny... Let's do Italian, honey. I'm so over Chinese. What's on the Tivo? Did you tape Bachelor?"

It doesn't matter if you voted for Bush or Kerry or Kermit the Frog, whether you hate this lousy war or love it like a sister, if you want to blow Osama up or suck him off -- we, as citizens of The Great Satan Five-Ought, are all dirty on this thing. Just because you didn't want it doesn't mean you don't own it. As if it's not bad enough those fuckheads in Washington Dee Cee are doing this shit in the first place, they're doing it in such fine fubar fashion as to NEEDLESSLY LET OUR GUYS DIE SO THEY CAN SAVE A FEW BUCKS. But fear not, Patriotic American, I'm sure they'll pass that savings right onto you as a loyal customer.

We should have our SUV-driving, WalMart-shopping, Starbucks latte-drinking, Sunday-Times-in-the-park-hey-you-wanna-see-the-new-Brad-Pitt-movie-I-heard-its-awesome asses kicked for allowing this shit to go on like it has. Through our collective inertia and apathy, we've let the single most important event of our decade become page 10 news.

Seriously. What the fuck is wrong with this country?

ON ANOTHER NOTE:
Check out my friend Leon's video clips (Leon's Reportages under LINKS). I love him, the crazy Dutch bastard...
You have to check out the Week in Review at Harper's.org
and
HAPPY HAJJ!

Waterborne

2006-01-10T01:02:00.000-05:00

This is a movie one of my bestest friends Chris Berry is in. It's part of Google's new video thing. They still have a few kinks to work out it seems but the movie's hot. Enjoy.

Call it Saturday...

2006-01-08T02:27:00.000-05:00

I got an e-mail from American Short Timer today and it made me really happy. As did his new post. Number one, it means he’s still around to post and number two, it’s like getting an e-mail from Gustav Hasford or somebody. Eyes and ears in Iraq complete with all the juicy rocking and rolling words that make it such sweet symphony, fine-tuned for the irony and sarcasm and good ol’ fuck yous.

See, I’ve always had this thing in my life where I like to apply war/military lingo to my everyday life and for the most part I’ve been informed by Vietnam books. When I waited tables, our customers were always “gooks” or “zipperheads” and we were “grunts” and “short-timers,” and the waitstation was the “DMZ” and our bar was “Dogpatch” or “Gookville,” and we said shit like “Don’t mean nothing” and “there it is” and “get some” and tried to one-up each other on knowing the names of military hardware while we got stoned and drunk and cried about our girlfriends or why the new waitress wouldn’t blow us. Now, thanks to ‘Raq guys like Colby Buzzell, AST, and Big Neal, I’ve found a whole new lingo and now when I’m at my bullshit office job where the most dangerous thing I’ll face all day is a paper-cut, I get to call people I don’t like “insurgents” and “haji” and quote 4th25 lyrics. This is my idea of fun. Send American boys to war and they’ll create their own fucking language. Is this a great country or what?

I had this fantasy when I was a kid, like junior high through college-y age just after the phase where all I wanted to be was a soldier, where I was going to be this bad-ass war protester when a war happened, right? I read all the ‘60s books and watched all the movies and knew all the songs and I was gonna do it, man. Burn my fucking draft card. Hell No I Won’t Go. Give the finger to The Man. Etc. But, the thing was, I was a little war-light there in the late ‘80s. Wasn’t a whole lot of shit going on where people were taking to the streets, you know? I mean, the first Gulf War was kind of over before it ever got started and since I didn’t know any war protesters and I lived in a little redneck Texas city, nothing was really happening anyway. I’m sure there were a few hippy kids in my little city who did some protesting and they probably got their balls stomped by drunk frat boys and now can say “Yeah, I lost that nut protesting the war in ‘91” or something, but to me that wasn’t a good enough reason to lose a ball and I was selling those frat boys drugs anyway, so it would’ve been awkward for everyone. But this war, oh boy! Now this war, this here Iraq war, this is something totally else. This is an invasion followed by an occupation and we’re in the third year of this shit and there’s not an end in sight. Guys getting back-door drafted through stop-loss and involuntary enlistments and National Guard units with more body bags than swinging tags and 2,000+ dead and counting -- this shit is off the hook. I mean, this is a WAR! The war protester’s fucking four-year long Super Bowl World Series wetdream kind of war! So, I was gonna do it, right? I was gonna get out there and protest the shit out of this war! Fuck yeah! I made the move to New York City, it’s 2004, the war, Bush, all that shit – man, I am gonna get out there and scream and yell and get tear-gassed and fight with the fucking pigs and it’s gonna be AWESOME. Except when I did get out there and start yelling, I looked around and noticed that I couldn’t really stand most of the other protesters. And I’m not talking about Grannies for Peace or the Vets Against the War or any of the older, more respectable folks. I’m talking about the hippy-dippy, so-called socialist/anarchist/whateverthefuck-ist kids. They all spouted this rhetorical bullshit and they all looked brain-washed and since when does taking a bath mean “selling out” and I said “You know what? I don’t want to be associated with these kids in any way, shape, or form. God love’em. I hope their team wins if they've even got a fucking team, but I just can’t do it.” So, I pulled out the camera and became a cockroach “journaliste” and that kind of sucked, too, because no matter how many pigs I cursed or how many flags I burned or how close I was to the girl who caught a rubber bullet in the face, I knew the stories about protesters on the streets were never going to be as good as stories about soldiers in the field and it was pointless to pretend I felt otherwise.

This is not a new history we’re writing in Iraq, anyway, so why should the anti-war movement be exceptional? No, this is the same ol’ history on both sides, repeating itself in real-time HD. Talk about not being able to read writing on walls -- how many of these fucking stunts do we have to pull before we realize the bottom line does not change? WE CANNOT KILL ALL THESE PEOPLE NO MATTER HOW HARD WE TRY OR HOW MUCH WE WANT TO. You can make bigger bombs but there’s always gonna be more people. Average age of an Iraqi is like 19 or something, right? Are you shitting me? By statistics alone, we’re fighting an army comprised mostly of children. Talk about punk as fuck. Now, those kids are pissed. Maybe if Johnny Rotten had had an AK, huh? Coulda seen some real rock-n-roll. Give those kids grenades! All of ‘em! And guitars! Yeah!

20-Ought-6 and time to realize we still have at least a couple more years of this shit. Same presidential circle jerk trying to keep all the money shots in the mouths of those with the deepest pockets. Same fat, white fuckers turning blood into oil and catastrophe into contracts and fucking the poor and giving the finger to most of the Rights they keep saying are worth getting killed for. “Seriously, that pile of bloody clothing that used to be your daughter? Worth it. Hey, cheer up and have some freedom, Haji” or “Sorry about your Specialist son who got IED’d on his way to the airport to pick up some general’s gay porn. It was so totally worth it, though. Check it out. Posthumous commendations? Huh? Yeah. And freedom. Don’t forget freedom. Your kid died so the ‘Raqis could finally get some freedom. ‘S good, right? Knew you’d like it. So, anyway, here’s his personal effects and don’t worry, we edited his diary for you. It was pretty upsetting stuff. And, frankly, off-the-record? Not too patriotic. So, there’s that… uh, can I use your bathroom?”

2006-01-05T17:25:00.000-05:00

We Win

2006-01-05T03:10:00.000-05:00

TEXAS 41, USC 38

Love Stories

2006-01-03T22:58:00.000-05:00

More than one way to skin a cat, make a move, pull a trigger… The time for words is all but over and then we’ll all be stuck here humming our favorite songs, making believe we still have the time for making things right. The days run away like Bukowski’s horses and on a cloudy afternoon in September, it’s easy to pretend you know what you’re doing. But when the sun goes down at 4 pm in January, all bets are off unless you’re holding aces…

A friend of mine came to town to visit over the holidays. His girlfriend fucked his best friend and just like that his world exploded. They couldn’t have done any less damage if they’d used a grenade. Never seems to be any end to the ways people come up with to hurt each other. As if it wouldn’t have been just as painful to fuck a stranger, she had to compound the fracture, twist the knife a little deeper so he wouldn’t think it was an accident. Not to mention the guy she boned was engaged to her best friend. Fucking insurgent bitch blew up everybody on the bus. Pathological. The kind of move you get to make only once in this life because once you know you’re capable of that kind of destruction, you run the risk of never being able to trust yourself enough to love again. I wonder what went through her head when she wiggled out of her bluejeans, let her bra and panties fall to the floor, looked into that dumb fuck’s eyes as he lowered himself into her. I wonder if it was a rush, if it felt like she had her finger hooked through the pin or pressing down on the Big Red Button. It’s seductive, that power. The undeniable pull of destruction, passive aggression turned outright aggression, all that anger turned up high until it singes everything it touches. She should have hit him in the head with a bat, stomped his balls to jelly, set his house on fire. But I guess those things aren’t the same as putting one right through his heart, leaving a giant hole where all that good shit used to live.

I’ve done my share of putting hurt on people, left a few amputees in my own wake, so I don’t have the vantage point of the moral high ground. No, I’ve been right down there in the muck with the rest of them, wading in a pool of shit and blood, blinded by rage and overcome by desire. It never hurts as bad as it does that first morning after, when you wake up and know that nothing will ever be the same again and there’s no take backs, no second chance to put things right, nothing to do but drink, cut yourself, bang your head on the wall until you black out. It’s a disease, pain. It calls out to you on those long winter nights, your only friend. And what a friend to have. It’ll never leave you alone until you cut it out like a cancer. But even the dumbest surgeon knows you can’t operate on yourself and every stab you take with the scalpel only leaves you with more holes, and the cancer just grows, the beast inside you.

I’m one of the lucky few. I found a woman with a taste for scar tissue and an eye for the long game. I got my second chance, and my third, and more since then. I’ve tried to put the pain in a place where it can’t get to me, or her, and it’s only when I forget it’s there do I fuck up and allow it to escape. It’s better to take a long look at it every now and then, pay homage to its power, leave a small sacrifice of self to sate its hunger. Can’t turn your back on the bitch or she’ll take a chunk of your ass. Better believe that.

Everybody’s built differently and who am I to say my friend won’t go back to that same girl and re-build it all from scratch. Better than me have been denied a shot at redemption so I do sincerely wish them the best of luck. I know it’s a tough pill to swallow, though, and no matter what kind of Phoenix rises from the ashes, there will come a night when he’ll roll over and watch her sleep and wonder when the hell she’ll do the same shit, or worse, again. Maybe his pain will decide it can’t wait to see what happens and he’ll hurt her back just to feed the maw inside him, put her out no matter how loud she screams or how many tears she cries. I hope it doesn’t go down like that. I really do.

I moved away after my wife fucked my best friend. It was over a decade ago and to tell the truth, I was sick of her ass anyway, looking for a way out from the jump. It was a fucked-up way to do me a favor, though, and I’ll never forget the hurt those two idiots gave me. It wasn’t so much that I loved her or even that I loved him (though I did, as much as I’ve ever loved anyone), it was that I let my guard down, never saw it coming, was too blinded by my own cool to see the tracer rounds streaking toward my position. I liked to think I was some bad, dope-smoking cat, all my angles were covered, no bitch was going to get to me. I’d never had a broken heart, couldn’t imagine it. I’d done all the suffering I was going to do in this life. Truth was I didn’t even know what real pain was until that year. And the shitty thing was I couldn’t even hurt her back. There was nothing left to take from her, no way to make her feel the way I felt. I just had to eat it, my plate of shit, every last bite. Ate it until I made myself sick and then I turned that sickness into a weapon, pointed it at every friendly in my sector and cut loose. I couldn’t hurt the ones I hated so I just kept hurting the ones I loved. Spent the better of a decade wondering why I even bothered with getting up in the morning, the only thing each day promised was more of my misdirected animosity. I was too chicken shit to kill myself, too weak to do the right thing by anyone, feeling sorry for myself for being so totally fucked up. It’s a wonder I have any friends left at all. But in the end there were a couple who survived those angry black days, and maybe they’re better for it. It’s hard to tell now because I’ll never know how good they could’ve been if they hadn’t had to spend so much of their time protecting themselves from me.

Maybe it all comes back to how much power we give our pricks and cunts. Maybe if we didn’t care who fucked who or why or when and just concentrated on the love of it all -- taking care of each other, treating each other with genuine respect, protecting each other from harm. But who among us, save for the swingers and the new-agers (who I’m convinced don’t believe half of their own shit), can separate sex from love? When you feel yourself inside another person, a person whose heart you want to eat, a person you really truly love, it’s hard to say that it’s just sex, that it doesn’t matter. Because it damn well matters and we all know it. It’s human nature. I don’t want some scumbag’s dirty paws all over my woman, his sweat mingling with hers, his breath on her skin. That’s the physical of it. What I want even less than that is someone fucking with what’s mine. That’s territorial pissing and it’s the biggest part. We all want to think we’re special. And when you find out you’re not, it can really set you off.

I guess the only thing I’ve really learned is that you can’t change the game, you can only change yourself. And if your choice is to go hard, you’ll live hard. But if you do have the sack to trust, the amount of pure joy your heart’s capable of can only be equaled by the absolute pain of having that trust broken. That’s what it's all about. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Cohen Knows...

2005-12-31T03:41:00.000-05:00

He’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Wonder what the weather in the desert is like right now...
I'm just hanging out with my friends, getting drunk, talking about showbiz… Now I’m listening to Leonard Cohen and smoking cigarettes, drinking whiskey… Sweeping up the Jokers… He gets into me like few else – I could listen to Leonard Cohen all night long and I might… I might…

He wants to trade the game he knows for shelter…

Is it like this for anyone but me? Tell me if you know what I’m talking about. I see it all so clearly, it’s all right there. It makes perfect sense to me. Chaos is the natural state. The more we try to impose normality on the human existence, the weirder we get. It’s just the way it is. We so want to pretend we’re so very witty and important like so many before us. They will not remember you. You will eventually be forgotten and that’s the natural state of things. Don’t worry about fighting it. To die is to die. Do what you have to do while you’re here. Once you’re dead, you won’t care.

MG is sleeping soundly on clean sheets and

It’s 4 in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold but I like where I’m living
There's music on Clinton St.
All through the evening
And I hear that you're building
Your little house
Deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now
I hope you’re keeping some kind of record

Yes, and Jane came by
With a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you
You looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat
Was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station
To meet every train and
You came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman
To a flake of your life
And when she came back
She was nobody’s wife

Well, I see you
There with a rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
And I see Jane’s awake
She sends her regards

And what can I tell you,
My brother,
My killer;
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you
I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way

If you ever come by here
For Jane or for me
Well, your enemy is sleeping
And his woman is free
Yes, and thanks
For the trouble you took
From her eyes
I thought it was there
For good
So I never tried

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely,
L. Cohen
Famous Blue Raincoat

I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
You were talking
So brave and so sweet
Giving me head
On the unmade bed
While the limousines
Wait in the street
Those were the reasons
And that was New York
We were running
For the money and the flesh
And that was called love
For the workers in song
Probably still is
For those of them left

And ah but you got away
Didn’t you babe
You just turned your back
On the crowd
And you got away
I never once heard you say
I need you
I don’t need you
I need you
I don’t need you
And all of that jiving around

I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
You were famous
Your heart was a legend
You told me again
You preferred handsome men
But for me you would
Make an exception
And clenching your fist
For the ones like us
Who are oppressed
By the figures of beauty
You fixed yourself
You said well nevermind
We are ugly
But we have the music

And then you got away
Didn’t you baby
You just turned your back
On the crowd
You got away
I never once heard you say
I need you
I don’t need you
I need you
I don’t need you
And all of that jiving around

I don’t mean to suggest
That I loved you the best
I can’t keep track of each falling rock
I remember you well
In the Chelsea Hotel
That’s all
I don’t think of you that often
Chelsea Hotel #2

Late on Wednesday

2005-12-29T01:04:00.000-05:00

Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
What would we do without them, these beautiful angels who touch our lives and make them so much harder than they have to be but make us better for the trouble? Where do they come from?

STRIKE! Day Two

2005-12-21T21:46:00.000-05:00

There's a transit strike in the NYC and let me tell you -- IT SUCKS. You don't have to be a New Yorker or even know very much about New York to grasp how badly we need public transportation in this city. 7 million people a day use those trains and buses -- 7 MILLION. In a city of 18 million, that's a large part of the population. I drove MG and a couple of our other friends in to mid-town today so they could go to work. The Brooklyn Bridge was a sea of people -- people who were forced to walk because there weren't any trains. To drive into Manhattan between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m., there had to be a minimum of four people in the vehicle. We were lucky. I had the day off and didn't mind doing the driving (3 1/2 hours round-trip to go to midtown from where we live in Brooklyn), so it was easy for us. Not so for the thousands and thousands of people hoofing it across the bridges in the 15 degree weather. It's the week before Christmas, man. This is not right.

The Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority couldn't hammer out their differences in regard to the TWU contract (which expired last week) and when Monday rolled around, the talks ground to a halt. So, Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., the TWU struck and that was that. The pain to the city was immediate and severe. There are going to be people who lose their jobs (not counting the TWU employees themselves who are being hit with enormous fines and garnished wages), people who die because emergency services can't reach them through the traffic (the roads are a gridlocked nightmare -- I drove for almost 8 hours today in two trips to Manhattan), people whose holidays are going to blow because these assholes can't work it out. And don't even get me started on the mayor. We're all looking to him to be a voice of reason, a cooler head we can count on -- what does he do? Calls the TWU a bunch of thugs and criminals. Jesus, Mike, that's the best you can do? What the fuck? Now, everybody's feelings are hurt and we're not any closer to a settlement than we were this time last week. It could be days before this strike is over.

It's one of those historic NYC moments, like the 2003 Blackout, where you wish you weren't really there to witness the history. Or better, that the history had been different and you'd witnessed something else. Why can't we have something unbelievably good happen to us so we can say, "Remember when that happened? That was AWESOME!" instead of "God, I could not believe that happened. I hope nothing like that ever happens again." This town is hurting right now and there's nothing any of us can do about it. Held hostage by our own city. What a fucker.

So, who knows what tomorrow will bring... MG and I are leaving town tomorrow. Her mother's coming to get us and whisk us off to New Jersey for the holidays. I'm sure the strike will still be here when we get back and that the news will only get worse but at least we'll be okay. There's nothing we can do about it anyway.

Dispatches from the Front of the War on Christmas

2005-12-15T09:53:00.000-05:00

NYC -- Heeding the call to arms set forth by the Liberal Media Army, Messupachristmasa in U.S., Queers Against Christmas, Menorah Defenders, and numerous other insurgent groups, thousands and thousands of Americans have joined ranks to wage unholy war on the combined armies of Little Baby Jesus and Santa.

Prompted by a non-stop barrage of propaganda put forth by these groups in recent weeks, insurgent forces took to the streets last week in a pogrom of destruction, setting Christmas trees alight, overturning Nativity scenes, and, in at least one instance, setting a drunken bell-ringing Santa on fire outside a JCPenny's in Dallas, Texas. The Santa's situation remains stable.

Reports of violence and destruction have been coming in from around the country as the War on Christmas heats up in this the final week before December 25.

Santa Helper and Little Baby Jesus General Bill O'Reilly said in a press release, "The hippies and Jews and God-haters of the insurgency will be destroyed by the righteous hand of Little Baby Jesus and the left hoof of fucking Prancer. We will rain down a shitstorm of commercialism and disingenous good cheer on all those who would oppose us; smothering them in platitudes and spending. Fuckers won't know what hit them."

Reports from around the country suggest a rising tide of anger this year due to a common perception of 2005 as a year when God clearly was not paying attention.

"2005 blew," one insurgent leader said. "W., Katrina, fires, tornadoes, floods, Iraq -- God hates us. If it's the last thing I do, I'll take Christmas and shove it right up his ass."

Read This

2005-12-14T21:23:00.000-05:00

I was just watching The Safety of Objects, a movie based on a book of short stories by AM Homes. The book is brilliant. The stories have this incredible immediacy and voyeuristic appeal. They're all glimpses into the minds and hearts of "ordinary" people whose lives are anything but ordinary. The movie's a mish-mash of the stories -- the story lines intersect and overlap. The book reminds me of Raymond Carver but the movie isn't nearly as good as Short Cuts. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess because it was just on and it made me think what a great book it is. Read it.

Speaking of great books -- I finished My War today and it's fucking great. If you ever wanted to know what it's like for the infantry in Iraq, read it. I think everyone in this country ought to have to read it. Especially if you've got a yellow Support Our Troops sticker stuck on the back of your SUV. Then you should have to memorize it. Buzzell tells it like it is and owns every single action he makes over there. He doesn't call himself a hero and he doesn't gloss over the nastiness or the confusion or the fear. It's one of the best war books I've ever read and I've read a lot of war books.

I'm just starting Beasts of No Nation and I'm really excited about it. It shouldn't take me long to read since it's only about 200 pages long. I read the first few pages and it's told in this lyrical, poetic first-person style. This kind of stylized first-person narrative reminded me a lot of Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks (another great book that you should read or re-read immediately). I like it when authors give you the full-immersion treatment and the language really puts you inside the protagonist's head, Catcher in the Rye style.

So, tomorrow is the last day before the MTA strike. The deadline is 12:01 a.m. Friday. I wonder if they'll put a slowdown on the trains. Shit. It'll probably take me forever to get to work but at least on Friday I'll have someone from work come pick me up. Then I don't have to work again until Jan. 3. It's pretty sweet. Two full weeks off. Next week, I'm going to try and hook up with some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while, take in some movies, read, write, take it easy. I guess if there's a transit strike, I'll be taking it a lot easier than I normally would -- cold weather + no trains = stay at home and do shit here. I still don't know all the details about this strike -- what the union's bitch is and what the MTA says. It's all been kind of a blur. I did catch the part about the bus drivers only have a 4-minute turnaround at the end of their runs, which is fucked up. They should definitely have more than 4 minutes to stretch their legs and go to the can and eat a snack or whatever. I'm sure there's some crooked motherfuckers on both sides of this debate and they're the reason the negotiations are going all to hell. It's the same old story -- the bosses argue with each other and the workers (including all of the workers who have to figure out how to get to work when these dudes go on strike) get screwed. It's so typical. It ought to definitely shake things up in this city. There hasn't been a transit strike in a long time. Maybe it'll be good for everyone in the end, but it's going to SUCK on Friday.

Today at work I pitched this: H. says "You're going to take advice from some orthodontist who thinks he's going to L.A. to be a photographer hobnobbing with Tinseltown's brightest?" F. says, "Hobnobbing? There hasn't been any hobnobbing in Tinseltown since Bogart and Bacall were knocking back sidecars at the Brown Derby." I thought it was pretty quick, but they ended up cutting this entire part of the scene in the rewrite. C'est la vie.

Holy shit. I just read that Chris Whitley died on Nov. 20. Damn. I really liked that guy. His album Living with the Law was a soundtrack for my life for about two years. My (then) wife turned me on to him and he was exactly what I was looking for at the time -- bluesy, junk-addled, country rock. RIP, amigo. Enjoy the Big Sky country.

Okay, I gotta go lay down. My head's fucking killing me and the souvlaki I got from the Greeks is sitting like a rock in my belly. Time to go get down and dim.

Til Tuesday

2005-12-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

So, I did nothing today at work except put my new War on Christmas card up. I'm so proud of it. I'm thinking I want to tell my family about my blog so they can go online and see the card, but I'm a little worried they'll read some of my other posts and freak out. I know they won't be too cool with the language I use but then again, this is the most honest writing I've ever done, so take the good with the bad, right? Anyway, I don't know how motivated I'll be to actually go out and get cards made and send them off, but you never know. MG might do it for us and that would rock. In the meantime, I've got the high-quality, photoshopped card ready for downloading right here.

I've been reading My War by Colby Buzzell and it's great. He's really been an inspiration to me as far as the writing goes. It's taken me a long time to be able to sit down in front of a blank screen and now all I want to do is write. I still don't know what I want this to be but it's starting to shape up a little. Learning how to post pictures and links and try to customize it a little has been great. It gives me something to do. I still can't figure out most of the technical stuff but the more I fuck around with it, the better I get at it. Truth is, the only ones reading it are me and MG so WTF, right?

I've always wanted to scrapbook, you know? An old girlfriend of mine bought the Journals of Dan Eldon a long time ago, and I remember looking at it and thinking to myself, "Wow. This guy was a genius." Of course, I knew his whole story and how he died and he's always been a huge inspiration to me. But, then again, sitting on my ass on some dirty couch in Austin, inspiration did not necessarily translate into action. Mostly, it was just fuel for the self-destructive fire. But, now, I have this blog and it's like I can do whatever I want and say whatever I want. It's overwhelming. I draw a blank sometimes thinking about what I want to say or what picture I want to put up or what book I can quote. I know the more I do it, the easier it will get. I was tempted to not post anything and wait for the right lightning to strike but that sounded like what I've been doing for the last 10 years. I know the only way I'll ever get better at this and anything else is to do it. It's on-the-job training in a way.

My friends and especially MG have always told me I needed to find an outlet for my opinions. I'm always going off (get a couple of drinks in me and watch out) about the war in Iraq and the Bush administration and the state of the world in general. I tend to get a little excited and intimidate people because I don't shut up. Since, I've started doing this, I haven't really gone off about anything because I've been too busy being a nerd and trying to "work some stuff out." That phase is rapidly passing. I know my style will change, too, as soon as I finish My War. I tend to sound like whoever I'm reading at the moment and I know I've been aping Buzzell. My apologies, CB. Soon, I'll have done this enough and I won't be scared anymore and I'll start sounding more like myself. Like I said, OTJ training.

War on Christmas Card

2005-12-13T17:14:00.000-05:00

This blog is saving me a ton of money on stamps.

Stormy Monday

2005-12-12T16:47:00.000-05:00

You may have noticed I put up some links to other sites on my page. I did this simply because I could. I know they might seem a little incongruous, but what the hell... This is shit I think is interesting and that's what this is for, right? As I go along and come up with more stuff, I'll post more links and pictures and what not.

I don't think there's anybody out there who's actually reading this, but if you (meaning M.G.) have anything you'd like to see on the site, e-mail a link or whatever.

My friend Bryan Mealer has stories in both the December and January issues of Esquire magazine. Check them out. Colby Buzzell's also got a story about Banksy in the December issue.

Banksy

2005-12-12T13:59:00.000-05:00

I went ahead and provided the link to his website at right. Enjoy.

Cat Power

2005-12-11T15:56:00.000-05:00

Cross Bones Style

Oh how time flies
With crystal clear eyes
And cold as coal
When you're ending with diamond eyes

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come and rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Hater I have your diamonds and still
'Cause you have seen some unbelievable things
Hater I have your diamonds

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Hater I have your diamonds and still
So still

Oh how time flies
With crystal clear eyes
And cold as coal
When you're ending with diamond eyes

Oh come child
In a crossbones style
Oh come child
Come and rescue me
'Cause you have seen some
Unbelievable things

Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday

2005-12-11T14:25:00.000-05:00

This is where it gets weird. As much as I want to sit down and write my situational comedy masterpiece, I feel like I need a little warm-up. I don’t want to pay for internet service at this coffee shop. This is actually one of the few times I’ve ever tried to write in a coffee shop and I gotta tell you, I’m not a big fan. I can’t smoke, for starters, and there’s so much going on, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to concentrate enough to get anything real done. Sitting here and doing this is no problem because it’s basically bullshit to kill time. It’s like calisthenics, a little PT before the real event. The good news is I brought my good Sony headphones so Death From Above 1979 is drowning out the world music/soft jazz that’s being piped into this shop. So, I’ve got that going for me.

Now, I remember why I drank so much in San Francisco. Writing makes me want to hurt myself. It used to be something I did to make myself feel better, a way to make sense of the madness inside my head. Now, there’s all this pressure and if I don’t write, I end up wasting a huge opportunity. I’ve got to get out of here. Out of this place where I can do no right. What am I so scared of? I want so badly to break through and spin this shit into gold. Capture some of that leftover angst from my days as a self-styled poet and try to make something funny out of it. Funny. That’s what’s so funny. All I really want to do is burn it all down.

Okay, I can do this. It’s not that big of a deal. I’ll write my spec. It’s going to be fine. I can do this. I just need a good idea.

You know what it is? It’s the same thing I’ve dealt with my entire life. It’s this ridiculous idea that I’m always on the outside looking in; I’m not one of the cool kids and this makes me want to tell everyone to fuck off, I don’t want to be part of their little clique anyway. This inevitably works – they all fuck off and I’m not part of the little clique. This leads to me realizing that I’ve made a huge mistake and that I really do want to be a part of the clique. Of course, by that point, it’s too late and they all think I’m some kind of disturbed retard for being so weird about everything. I don’t know why I do that. It’s like with my job now – I feel like I don’t know how any of them feel about me. It totally freaks me out. Maybe I’m just too intense or something. People don’t know what to do with me. I never get any of their jokes. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about half the time. I’m smart enough – I mean, I do the job part of it right. But, I get so weird about the personal politics and whatever. All I’ve ever wanted was someone I respected to take me under his/her wing and show me the way, you know? Give me some guidance and re-assure me that I’m not a total fuck-up, let me know that with my talents and brains, I’ll for sure make something out of myself some day. Instead, I just go around with this fucked self-image, alienating the shit out of people, making jokes no one gets, hopelessly trying to figure out the puzzle that is inter-personal relations. I suck at it.

Iggy Pop now – Sweet Sixteen – like a salve for the soul. Something angry and raw, songs about girls, seeking and destroying. Maybe I should consider a career in the music biz. I’d be really good at that, I bet. I love the rock. Rock’s all about feeling weird and isolated and alienating the shit out of people. It’s why it exists. From its roots in the Delta when it was songs about killing your old lady or getting strung up by redneck crackers right through to now – rock is all about being fucked up. Nothing touches me like music. I could live without everything else, I think, except music. It would suck not to be able to read or write, but it’d be a hell of a lot easier to deal with as long as I had some music.

I was watching HBO On Demand the other day. I wasn’t really looking for anything particular, just kind of letting the little intro thing play in the background and there was this song that’s part of their whole On Demand advertising. Maybe you’ve seen it – it’s the one where Tony Soprano walks out of his house and there’s giant block letters in his yard spelling Sopranos. Larry David runs by a set of giant block letters that spell Curb Your Enthusiasm. They have one for Deadwood, The Wire, all of their original shows. Anyway, the song that plays is one I’d never heard before but I thought it was so beautiful, so moving, I just started crying right then and there. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and I don’t know why it upset me so much. That’s the kind of effect music can have on me. I’ll be fine one minute and then I’ll hear some song and it’s like somebody punched me in the stomach. No one should be this sensitive. I’m so fucking sensitive. I try to act all tough and macho and shit sometimes, but really I’m just a crybaby. My feelings get hurt too easily and I feel sorry for myself all the time. It’s retarded. It’s definitely one of the things I’m going to deal with in therapy if I ever go back to therapy. It’s fucked up.

I need a smoke. Not being able to smoke when I write is bullshit. My girlfriend wanted some time in our apartment by herself to get some stuff done, so I came down here. But, shit, man, it’s like Grace Paley said – one of the main reasons to become a writer is to be able to smoke on the job. At least, I think it was Grace Paley who said it. It could’ve been someone else. Still, the point is valid.

Okay, I went to smoke and it’s colder than shit outside. I like the cold weather. Everything seems more serious when it’s cold. The cold brings out some kind of animalistic survival instinct in me, man versus nature and all that. I especially like the cold weather here in the city – everybody wears black and we all just look cooler in black. It’s the official color of NYC. You go out on the streets and it’s just a sea of black. It’s awesome.

Here comes success/here comes success – sing it, Iggy. It’s right around the corner, right? Here comes my new car, my big house, my financial security. It’s there for the taking. Just have to find a way to lay my grubby, un-motivated paws on it. Then I’ll be set. I’ll be ready.

Jesus, am I going to be poor and under-employed for the rest of my fucking life? I can’t believe I’m still doing this shit. I can’t believe that I’m going to be starting over AGAIN in just a couple of months. What a pisser. This time, I need to decide what it is I really want to do and go for it. Take the lumps and go for it, even if it means starting at the bottom. I know I want the money I’d get for writing a sit-com episode but I don’t really want to be a sit-com writer. I don’t know what to do. I love the biz and all, but there has to be something more meaningful out there. I can’t just sit here and blog every day. It’s ridiculous. Not that I shouldn’t blog but I really need to figure out what to do with my life. God, I feel like I’m 25 again. Staring at the abyss, wondering how close I can get to the edge before I just fall right over. I’m so stupid. I don’t even know if there is a job out there for me. I’ve been kicking around the idea of going back to college and I don’t even know if that’s such a hot idea. What happens when I blow it again? Then I’m back in debt and square-oned to boot. I’m going to make myself throw up. I swear to God.

How do they do it? Normal people. Am I really that lazy? It can’t just be that, can it? Maybe a lack of self-discipline is my biggest problem. I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW! I should have that tattooed on my forehead. God forbid I should ever have any real problems.

Now, I have to take a whiz and the bathroom here is out of order. What the hell? Does that mean I have to pack it up and go home and pee and then come back here? I paid the six bucks for internet access for the day and it looks like I’m going to have to go home and pee. I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave once I get home again. I knew I shouldn’t have had this giant coffee. Damn it. Oh well. I can hold it for a little while longer. I wonder how much more cleaning my girlfriend wants to do. I just want to smoke some dope and go see Narnia. That sounds like a good plan.

I don't feel very funny today. Maybe it's the weather or the fact that I've moved on to Cat Power for my listening pleasure. Either way, I think the day's shot when it comes to writing my spec today. I feel much more like doing this than I do trying to map out some kind of situation comedy. I'm only sporadically funny, anyway. I don't have any idea where to start. What can I do? I should take a class or something. Hell, I don't know what to do.

I have to pee, man. This blows. I guess I'll pack it up and go home and then come back. I can blog all day. Shit, this is easy.

Went home to pee. Lost my choice spot by the window but whatever, I have a seat. Now I just have to sit here and kill some more time until it's time to do something else. Maybe I can convince myself that it's not really that important I get a script this season. Tell myself that I didn't want to do it anyway. I don't know what it will take to pull this off. I can't believe it's this hard for me. I wish I had a partner. That'd be so much easier. I work well with others. It's true. When I have someone else to push me, I get so much more done. I respond well to the pressure.

Hell, I don't know if that's true. I have a bad habit of freezing up. Even when I have partners, I still freeze up. Then, I piss off my friends and they don't want to work with me anymore. It's happened before. I wouldn't freeze up this time, though. Not that anyone wants to work with me, anyway. I'm assed out on this deal. I'm assing myself out but assed is assed.

Cat Power's version of "Psychic Hearts" by Sonic Youth is pretty awesome. Sounds like a cover one of my friends would've done if any of them could sing. Just a chick and her guitar and one bad-ass song. That's what it's all about. "Losers/assholes/suck all the luck" Truer words have never been spoken.

Found out the name and title of the song on HBO On Demand that I like -- "Change" by Tracy Chapman. Just heard 30 seconds of it on iTunes and it killed me all over again. I don't know what it is about that song. I'm such a girl.

Well, it's official. I've managed to completely waste another Sunday doing nothing but bullshit blogging. I'm so proud of myself. Why try and do something that would actually pay me when I can do this? Fuck it.

Okay, time to go get loaded and go to the movies. Until the next time...

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2005-12-09T17:10:00.000-05:00

One of the main reasons I want to make a movie is so I can put the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on a soundtrack. I fucking love this band.

No Business Like Show Business

2005-12-09T16:25:00.000-05:00

I found this picture while looking for things to post and I thought it appropriate since it's 20 degrees and there's snow on the ground. It's me and my girlfriend (she's hot, huh?) in St. Croix this past July. We were on an all-day boat trip to one of the little islands off St. Croix. We snorkeled and laid on the beach, then had a big picnic and got drunk on rum punch. It was a good time. Seems like it happened a million years ago.

Well, tonight is show night and I'm killing time in the office waiting for curtain call. We were on stage all day today for rehearsals and we had some laughs. There are some decent jokes in this episode and I even got a joke in. (It's the blow to a scene which in layman's terms means the last joke of a scene. I won't bore you with it -- it's only funny if I set up the first 20 pages of the script and I'm not going to do that here. The important part is I pitched it and it's in). One of the funniest moments occurred off-camera. We were rehearsing a scene where one of our actors has to belch. She's not a natural belcher so we had one of the writers do a stunt belch for her. During rehearsals, they dubbed in the stunt belch and it was funny, but then one of the executive producers concocted a scheme to substitute a fart noise for the belch during one of the takes in tonight's taping. I told the writer of this week's episode about it and he shook his head sadly -- "This is what it's come to at age 52. I had dreams once. I did." This cracked me up. I'm sure the fart joke will be funny, too, but the simple pathos of the writer's comment and the fear it induced in me was far more hilarious than anything else.

When do dreams die? And what hand do each of us have in their destruction? Is it dream murder to choose to make money rather than follow your heart? And what happens if your heart's confused because your body is so poor that any job seems like a good job? What happens when you get to the point of no return -- that point when you've committed so much time to doing something that you have no choice but to do it for the rest of your life EVEN though it's not at all what you really wanted to do? And what is it you want to do?

I love the old saw about "If you don't love it, don't do it" because it's such a pussy thing to say. It's the kind of thing an actor or an artist would say. It's not the kind of thing my dad would say. My dad doesn't love working shift work at a chemical plant. My dad loves hanging out with us, but you know what? That gig doesn't pay very well. So, he did what he had to do and sucked it up and he'll retire in a couple of years and then he'll be able to hang out all the time. I was a firm believer in the "don't love it, don't do it" thing for all of my 20s and part of my 30s. Now, I've decided that I what I really love is not being fucking broke. That's what I love. So, even if my heart isn't in it, I'll probably still do it if it means I'll make money at it. Hence, my spec script...

Soon.

Real soon.

Nephews

2005-12-08T21:47:00.000-05:00

This is me with my oldest nephews, Ciaran and Ryland. Ciaran was born 14 years ago while my older brother, Daniel, was in the Air Force. Ryland followed 4 years later and now they live with Dan and their mom Lynette near Fort Worth. These are the kids who first taught me the absolute joy of being an uncle.
This is McKy. He belongs to my little brother Ty and his wife Amanda. I met him for the first time this last Thanksgiving. He's a beautiful little boy and I can't wait to see him again.
This is Cayden, one of the coolest kids I know. He's my brother Tom's oldest. Dig his Browning hat and NASCAR sunglasses. He lives in Amarillo with Tom and his mom Marcy.
This is my littlest nephew Liam, Tom and Marcy's youngest. I love this picture because he looks like I feel -- a surprised mess. He's the happiest baby you'll ever meet. Never seen a kid laugh like he does. My dad says it's because he was born with heart trouble and almost died right out of the womb. Since he's only 8 months old and has already had open-heart surgery, maybe he figures the rest of the ride is downhill. Sounds good to me.

I love to talk about these kids. They're all so different and special in their own way. It doesn't surprise me in the least that my brothers would have such good kids. Being together will all of them at the same time this past Thanksgiving was a high point of my life. It's hard for my brothers and I to all be in the same place at the same time, so having all their kids there made it the second best thing next to having us all there. I love these boys because they're rowdy and willful and all love to laugh. It's cool watching them grow up and, in the case of Ciaran and Ryland, growing up with them. I like being Uncle Kiley who lives in New York with his New Jersey girlfriend and works for a television show. We have a lot of fun when we're together. I miss them.

Banksy

2005-12-08T13:47:00.000-05:00

Learning to Fly

2005-12-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

Look, it's me. Today, I learned how to post pictures. This might seem like a non-accomplishment to the more experienced bloggers out there but for me, it's huge. I have many pictures. Sadly, I don't have many of them here with me at work or I'd be busy posting the hell out of them. All right, then...

I watched the news last night about the guy down in Florida being shot by the Air Marshalls. Now, I'm no fan of the cops and, most of the time, I tend to take a rather lopsidedly lefty stance when it comes to cops blowing people away. BUT... Come on, dude, really? You CANNOT get on a plane and start making bomb threats. AND you cannot get up out of your seat and run down the aisles screaming you have a bomb in your bag, especially when there are armed federal agents on board the aircraft. THEY WILL SHOOT YOU. I mean, if NYPD will poke 40 holes in you for taking out your keys, you can rest assured the feds will drop you like a bad habit for screaming bomb threats on a commerical aircraft and then running at them top-speed with your hand in your bag. Let this be a lesson to us all -- THEY ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND WITH THE PLANES.

I do think this highlights an important fact about life in these United States. Other than the random, devastating attack we have much more to fear from crazy people than we do from jihadists. It's the first time an Air Marshall has shot someone since they started the program after 9-11 and the guy they shot was a manic-depressive missionary who works at a paint store. So, for all the profiling and detentions and delays and "if you see something, say something", the first casualty in the domestic air war on terror is some poor, crazy bastard off his meds whose quiche lorraine of a brain told him to do something most people would never, ever, even consider doing. What a waste.

I live in NYC and I see crazy people all the time. It kind of makes a mockery of the city's advice to "report any suspicious behavior." What am I supposed to consider suspicious? The guy on the corner with women's underwear on his head eating his own shit? Or is it the normal-looking lady in the nice clothes having the animated argument with herself and lightly banging her head against the subway window? I have a feeling it would take something pretty goddam out of the ordinary to get people to look up from the Post and turn down their iPods. Especially on the trains. The morning commute is the only time a lot of us have to ourselves all day and the last thing we want is to be actively engaged with our fellow commuters. We want to listen to music and read. I know, personally, that if something serious pops off on one of the trains I'm riding, I'll probably be dead before I even know what's going on. I'm just not aware enough to save myself. And I'm okay with that.

"A working class hero is something to be/If you want to be a hero/Then just follow me..."
John Lennon

You Have Got to be Kidding Me

2005-12-07T11:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure what the hell it is I'm supposed to be doing right now. I'm reasonably sure blogging is not it, but I need a break from banging my head on the wall. I'm trying to write a spec script and it's a fucking nightmare. For those of you unfamiliar with the lingo, a spec script is a writing sample based on an existing television show. You write an episode of a show and then use it to try and get jobs. I've never written one before and it's killing me. I don't know what the hell I'm doing and I feel like slitting my wrists. But I have to write one. I HAVE TO.

The first problem is coming up with a show to write a spec for. In my adult life, I haven't watched much TV, and the last sit-com I watched regularly before this past year was, I don't know, M*A*S*H or Cheers or something. I got a job here as a production assistant two years ago when the show was in its first season, but I didn't start watching it until this year when I got this writers' assistant gig. I wasn't even really sure what this gig was when I took it -- I just knew it was a step up from dumping trash and that it involved writing. (This may come as a real kick in the ass to anyone out there who's got a drawer full of specs and would kill to be a writers' assistant for a TV show, but I totally lucked into this job). However, since I started in July, I've come to learn that the writers' assistant job is basically the minor leagues of television writing. And since the job I'm working on is a sit-com, it only makes sense that I would be working on a sit-com spec. So, I've upped my number of sit-com viewing hours and I've found a few shows that I really enjoy: Arrested Development, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Office. Okay, so I pick Curb or The Office (since A.D. was cancelled and Extras is British) and away I go...

OR

I sit in front of my computer paralyzed by my absolute ignorance of how to write for TV. I know a hell of a lot more about it now than I did in May, but, still, just to sit down and be funny? Ouch. My humor is more along the lines of the smart-ass comeback variety. I'm not sure I know how to write a joke. Okay, I am sure. I don't know how to write a joke. This little nugget of self-knowledge is not going to keep me from trying because, face it, I need a career. Sure, in my younger days, I wanted to be a novelist, a journalist, a Doctor Without A Border saving little kids in faraway lands. But, I'm none of those things. What I am is a 34-year-old burnout staring down the long barrel of his wasted youth, asking himself, "What the hell happened?" So, now my future comes down to me being funny. On purpose. For television. I don't know how I got here.

Boo hoo, right? Poor me. That's not at all what I'm saying. I know how lucky I am and what a great opportunity has been presented to me. I mean, my bosses are fantastic people -- warm, generous, and totally willing to read anything I put in front of them. The other two assistants on this job are most likely getting scripts to write for this season, and I'm sure they'd give me one if they had anything to read from me. But, they don't. They will. But, they don't. Yet.

My girlfriend came back from one of her business trips (Mexico, this time) last night and we talked for a while about the future -- mine, hers, ours. We want to live in NYC and get an apartment together, eventually marry, have some young'uns, the whole nine yards. But NYC is not the town for a bourgeoning sit-com writing career. Every writer I work with is from L.A. They're all going back to L.A. Our show is the only sit-com in the City. It's not like I can just go be a writers' assistant for another show once this one's over. And if we don't get picked back up for another season, I could be sitting here three months from now with only the memories of my lovely time in TV land as compensation for the last three years of my life. Want-ads in one hand, dick in the other, as it were. Fuck.

So, what's a boy to do? Going back to school is always an option. I don't know if that's economically feasible but I'm pretty sure I could write my way into City College. Take a job in another industry -- start out as some low-level assistant (again) and try to work my way up to wherever up is. I don't know what industry that would be exactly. All I've ever wanted to do was read and write so I guess it would have something to do with that. NYC is a good place for that sort of thing. Probably a little easier if you're a 23-year-old girl from a private liberal arts college but not impossible for a 30-nothing goofball without a clue as to how the real world actually works.

Christ, I'm going to make myself puke thinking about this shit. It's like everything I do in life is some anecdote to put in my memoir, another page in the "long look back on an extraordinary life." As if there will be a day when I'll just wake up an accomplished author with the luxuries of hindsight and a convenient sense of revisionism. "I remember those days -- the fights, the drinking, the jokes... We were young, fierce. And so fucking lazy." It was fine when I was in my 20s and really believed that it would somehow all work itself out -- I was too smart, too good-looking, too goddam ME for it to do anything other than all work out. Why would I need to actually do anything? Someday, the words would just start gushing forth and all I'd have to do is smoke cigarettes and look good in black-and-white photographs. The endless slew of restaurant and bar jobs, the drinking, the drugs, the hours spent in a stupor on one stained couch or another -- this was all Material. Material for The Book. It was all going into The Book. One day.

I'm afraid that day has come. And guess what? There's no book. There's no book because I haven't written it. I haven't written anything in years. But that's all about to change. I'm going to write every day from now on. I'm going to write blog entries, long and detailed e-mails to friends, love letters to my lady, the first three chapters of The Book, and yes, a goddam spec script. I'm going to be prolific and profound, drawing on years of Life Experience to compose beautiful, meaningful stories bound to make'em laugh until they cry. The Great and Terrible Personal Revolution of 2005 has begun, and you are here to witness it's insemination, that precise moment when the shuddering orgasm of release fulfills the promise of a new life. Oh, you lucky few, you privileged ones.

Long time, no see...

2005-12-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

So, it's been awhile since I posted anything. After starting up in the summer of '04, I lost steam and convinced myself that the whole idea of blogging was bullshit, and that I could do better things with my time. This attitude lasted for about 14 months until I looked around and realized I hadn't done a single better thing with my time. Not a creative word written, not a meaningful task accomplished. So, why not blog? At least it's something.

[Funny how nervous I get about posting these things. Took me a year just to put my name on my blog. Really, the only reason I started in the first place was because I thought "Guts on Parade" was a bad-ass name for a blog. The good news is no one's found it yet and there's a chance they never will.]

I work with writers now and the stakes are much higher should someone find out about my little blog. Last year, my job was a joke and my world was consumed by the vast right-wing conspiracy and the selling of the Presidency and Ending The War. Now, I'm a writers' assistant and it's all about making with the funny. Not that I'm funny or even know what funny is; I just happen to have exceptional typing, grammar, and punctuation skills. If I had any real talent, I'd be writing scripts and making shows and doing whatever it is that people with real talent do. I'll probably be an assistant for the rest of my life.

My problem is me and my laziness and my fear of failure and my sense of entitlement, not to mention a superiority complex which is weird since I grew up in a town of about 20 people and then dropped out of college. But there it is. I have my passions -- music, books, writing, film -- but trying to get my terrified ass out of bed to put pen to paper or leave my house with a camera is a dogfight. Mostly, I just lay in bed and cry until my girlfriend loses patience and kicks me in the ass. It's worse when she leaves town (which she does a lot -- she's in international book sales) because then there's no one to make me leave the bed. Usually, on those occasions, I go to bed around 5 a.m. on Saturday then emerge two days later, covered with dried semen and bits of taco and the stink of bad dreams. It ain't pretty and I ain't proud.

I was just reading some of the stuff I had on hold for the site. It's pretty awful but I decided to go ahead and publish it anyway because why the fuck not? Me being all dark and drunk and gloomy and trying to sound like a bad-ass. It really cracks me up. It's the kind of thing where if anyone I knew ever read it, their faces would turn red from embarassment for me. How could I not want that?

Who am I kidding? I've only got about three friends in the world, anyway, and it's doubtful I could get any of them to read past the first couple of lines. All of my friends are smart and busy and wouldn't want to waste their time on shite of this caliber. Same with my girlfriend. She's real smart, too. Can't waste their time with this garbage.

Someday, I'll make this a site worth reading. Until that day, these Guts are all I've got. Better than nothing.

Whatever, Midget

2004-11-12T01:55:00.000-05:00

I hope this all works out for you
Happens like a snapshot
Could never or ever
There should always be
Thunder in the background
There should always be a rain
Of emptys

I haven't been feeling so good lately...Think I might be coming down with something. ( She's right. She's always right.
)

It'll never last. Nothing ever does. You write such blood and volume, such truth. Not even interesting enough to be the right kind of asshole.

Hard to be taken seriously
Looking up from the floorboard

I couldn't even begin to tell you
I couldn't even begin to tell you
I couldn't even try
I just wanted to
Bleed on it a little

And It's Still Fucking Today

2004-09-23T01:27:00.000-04:00

Mosquitoes and cold Tecates at midnight,
Can't believe it's fall and I'm falling
And falling and I've been here before
I want to tell you about how mean those boys can be
Leave you dry to bleed and it's nothing to leave
As easy as wiping away tears

Come to me, tell me
All about how you feel
So hurt, confused, and alone
Come to me, tell me
How you didn't want to see
Him with her
And who the fuck is she, anyway?
Come to me, tell me
Everything you don't want him to know
I can keep a secret

You can trust me

It's a rock song,
Doesn't have to make sense
Doesn't even have to make
You feel better
I know you won't anyway
Why waste my time?

Love is a scrap of paper
Put it in your pocket
Next to credit card receipts
And winning lottery tickets
Keep everything that means anything
Someplace safe

You can change the color of your hair
And the way you walk
Your number and all of your friends
Pretend your phone's not ringing
When you know it's me

Words like a shovel
Digging those graves
And it won't be anything
To leave roses

Scattered Shots and Smoke from Distant Fires

2004-09-22T21:12:00.000-04:00

Grow up with dirt under your nails and the smell of pigshit on your Keds, mail your hope to nobody from your lonely outpost in the middle of Texas nowhere, tell your mom to put down the knife, put it down, and then crawl under your bed with an AM radio. The storms come fast on the flatlands, clouds gather like cocked fists and you only get scared when it gets still. Soon enough it's the sound of a freight train rumbling through your living room -- F5 like a motherfucker -- and when the day breaks, your house is gone. After, your family stands among the rubble, trying to look stoic instead of like newly-homeless white trash and your baby brother holds his favorite toy truck and cries and somebody says something about Jesus's love and God's will and it's then, right then, you know if there is a hell, you are going straight to it. Because you hate Jesus and God and the stupid fucking Holy Ghost and God can take his will and shove it straight up his ass. You just want your baby brother to stop crying and his favorite toy truck back on its shelf and the shelf back on the wall and the wall back on the house and the house back on the lot and it's not much to ask for but God doesn't give a rat's ass about you, your house, or your crying baby brother. You feel God's malevolence like fire on your face and if you could, you'd kill that mean sonofabitch because he is clearly out to get you.

It's not long after God destroys your house, you hear your first punk rock song. You're 11 years old and living in a church basement while your family builds a new house and it's all you can do not to burn that fucking church down. You spend a lot of time outside and it's one of those bad, bad days when you see it -- a copy of the Repo Man soundtrack lying there on the sidewalk outside the church and it's just a cassette, no case, baking on the sidewalk on a late August afternoon. You study the faded lettering and the words on it seem to be written by the Devil himself -- Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Coup d' Etat, When the Shit Hits the Fan, Juicy Bananas, Iggy Pop. It's hot to the touch when you pick it up and it's still hot two minutes later when you sneak it into your walkman and turn the volume way up. From the first chord of the first song, you feel your whole life change like someone turned you inside out and scraped you clean and the blackness inside you suddenly has a voice and that voice is angry, raw, dangerous. You realize instantly everything you have been taught is total bullshit, that life is utterly meaningless, there is no Heaven but only Hell on Earth and as you sit there in the dark of a closet in the basement of a Southern Baptist Church, you know you will never, ever be this happy again.

You get into your first fist fight not long after and the taste of blood in your mouth makes you crazy and you try to beat that kid stupid but he's bigger, older, faster, stronger and he leaves you in a crumpled heap beside the swingset in the city park. The pain and humiliation give you the strength to get up and later, when that kid's at home, they give you the strength to throw a shit-smeared brick through his bedroom window while he sleeps. He'll beat you again for it but you won't care and you'll swear to do worse to him every time he puts his hands on you. Soon enough, that kid and all the other kids will give you a wide berth because you are a way they will never be and your very presence will frighten and intimidate them and you will take solace in their fear and the solitude it provides you. Your only friend will be the music you wrap yourself in like armor and as time goes by, the music will define you. Your parents will not understand you, your teachers will punish you, the institutions you are sent to will try to break you, but the music will always be there for you and the years will pass and, someday, you'll find yourself sitting at a downtown bar, remembering all you've left behind and you will take pride in the fact that you are still here. You will tally the days as you count the scars and the shots will chase beers while outside the winds will gather speed as three-chord guitar tattoos a rhythm on your soul and, furious, you will again curse God and beg him to teach you a lesson.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

There has to be some better way to get through this. The drinking and hiding, bobbing and weaving, trying to stay dry while it rains shit -- this is no way to live. I remember a time not so long ago when the worst thing I had to worry my pretty little head about was whether I'd be able to get into both the Sonic Youth and the Modest Mouse shows for free, and whether I'd have enough money for booze. I didn't think about war, famine, the prison-industrial complex, the Christian Right, abortion rights, starving Africans, the global AIDS epidemic, rogue nations, pre-emptive strikes, cluster bombs, body bags, or any of the other things that now clog my brain on a minute-by-minute basis. Ah, the Age of Ignorance. I was devout. I cooked BBQ, ate drugs, drank Miller High Life, listened to rock and roll all day every day, and at night, with the smell of smoke still thick in my hair, plunged headlong into the fray of wasted youth. I cared only about myself and I'd get fucked up and cry to my friends about how tortured I was, how nothing made sense, how crazy I felt, how the Pain of Life was really fucking getting me down, man. Those were the best days of my life and I proudly threw them away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why Is It Always 4 A.M.?

2004-09-19T04:30:00.000-04:00

There's a good-sized part of me that really does want the revolution to start a little later than normal time. I mean it would be ideal if the whole thing could start around, say, six or seven-ish. That'd be so much better for me personally. I think the first shots should be fired at night anyway: tracers in the inky blackness, illumination rounds and all that.

Set Your Kitchen on Fire and Dance, Dance, Dance

2004-09-17T01:25:00.000-04:00

Too much whiskey and too few cigarets -- the bass, the bass is all that matters -- love you, love you, love you, love you, love you...

massive attack
and I'm being massively attacked
not me
but everyone I know in dreams
there's a very thin line

If I ask for a time-out,....
I want your drugs, I have your money

Tell me how it goes

I wait

What I Did on My Summer Vacation: Part I

2004-09-15T21:58:00.000-04:00

MOVIE-MAKING ON THE MEAN STREETS; ANGER AND PANIC AT THE RNC

My partners and I are shooting a documentary about the 2004 Summer of Love in NYC, and the Republican National Convention was the heartbeat of the whole story. We worked six straight days during the RNC, shooting everything that moved starting on Friday Aug. 27 when we went to the Critical Mass bike ride. That night started out at Union Square with 5,000 bikers sharing one collective grin and ended up at 2nd Ave. and 9th St. with around 2,000 bikes and not a smile in sight.

The ride wound its way down Broadway from Union Square and then headed back up to the Garden. My team and I worked our way down to St. Mark's Church where the ride was scheduled to end and waited. We were getting radio updates from some of the folks at the church, and we could tell the riders were catching flak all along the route. They'd been split up and diverted and were being arrested in small numbers. The main body of the ride managed to stay together and came en masse to St. Mark's.

When they arrived, they filled three full blocks. The energy was positive -- they felt like they'd gotten one over on the fuzz and they were stoked. They stood in the street, blocking the shit out of traffic and raised their bikes in the air in triumph. The cops were there in a flash, winding their way through the crowd on those ridiculous-ass scooters and it looked the party was coming to an end.

We stood in the street waiting for the inevitable order to disperse. An order which never came. I was in the in the north crosswalk when a scuffle broke out in front of me. One of the scooters had parked on some kid's foot and he couldn't move when they told him to. They grabbed him, he protested, and the next thing you know, a couple of giant cops sat on his head while another put his cuffs on so tight, you could hear him wailing as they dragged him off. The crowd was getting pissed at this point and random plastic bottles sailed toward the main body of cops in the middle of the intersection. It was time to call in back-up. They arrived in force (they'd only been a few blocks away but traffic had kept them out of the area for the first few minutes), and it was all over at that point. They cleared those streets with military precision in a matter of minutes and brought in the paddy wagons.

The cops grabbed about 200 or so people and the same amount of bicycles over the course of the night. Most of those arrested went down easy, but the crowd definitely made themselves felt, especially at first before the Main Cop had a chance to clear the streets. That was when it was the best -- when I could get right up on the action, brush up hard against the energy of an angry mob surrounding a temporarily overwhelmed police force, trying to keep it steady in the riot-helmeted face of painful arrest.

It was my first experience shooting something like that -- the screams of a pulsing crowd "LET THEM GO! LET THEM GO!"; red-faced, angry cops throwing people to the ground right in front of me; the potential for serious violence hanging heavy in the air. It was heady stuff and I fought my way to the middle of it, trying to catch every arrest I could on camera. The cops weren't fucking around but I managed to get a somewhat shaky bluff in and stay on the streets for a long time. Eventually, everybody ended up on the sidewalk, but it was good stuff for awhile.

That first night, NYPD showed a few of the tactics they would refine over the next few days -- uniformed and undercover Scooter Squadrons swooping in like Hell's Angels on Hondas every time the shit even looked like it would hit the fan; the mass arrest mania as if attrition would somehow slow the tide of anger; the "show no mercy" school of cuff and stuff in the hopes that if the kids got a good look at what was waiting for them when the cuffs went on, they'd lose heart and go home. Truth is, even though Friday was only a taste of what was to come, it was the only night save for Tuesday in the whole godforsaken week those kids even stood half a chance. If there'd been a dozen even remotely dedicated anarchists in the whole lot of them on Friday, that street would've run with blood, but it was like we knew all along -- the kids are just hippies at heart, no matter what the Post tells you.

After Friday's melee, the rest of that first weekend passed without much incident for my team. Saturday was dead and Sunday was good only because I got to watch that fucking giant green dragon burn to the ground in front of me. I was right on the corner when it went up but as luck would have it, my back was turned when the sonofabitch first caught. I managed to get around pretty quick on it once I heard the action and ended up with decent footage. The whole giant parade itself was a sight to behold, but there was very little bang-bang. There was some shit later that day in Times Square but we were too late and out of position to get anything out of it. We ended the day at Central Park with our main subject, a girl we were following throughout the week, and she was laying low for the most part. I think we were all subconsciously conserving energy, waiting for the undercard to be over and the Main Event to begin on Monday.

Monday was busy. That was the day we marched twice, the first time from Union Square to the Garden and the second time from the UN to the Garden. The first march went off pretty smoothly. Lots of yelling and chanting but nobody did shit and there was even a live band at the end of the thing. It was sanctioned by the city and it was in the middle of the day, so it wasn't very rowdy. The second one, however, was later and it wasn't sanctioned and there was no live band at the end of it. It was an altogether different experience.

It started out at the UN with fiery speeches -- many, many, many fiery speeches -- and by the time it actually got moving, the skys were gray and going to black. The cops didn't hassle anyone at first and even provided an escort down 2nd Ave., right past the tunnel to 23rd St. where the whole parade began moving west to 7th Ave. The cops are some sneaky motherfuckers and they let the march spread itself thin along 23rd St. before they began picking people off.

It started with a random arrest -- the cops decided to grab somebody, everybody around the arrestee started screaming to let them go, more cops showed up to chase people back, and then it was over. Then there was another arrest. And another. By the time we reached 5th Ave., the cops were picking somebody up at every intersection. The crowd was getting more spread out and more agitated with the whole situation every time it happened. The cops have a nose for this shit and it didn't take long before they brought out the World's Biggest Cop -- the one we reverentially referred to as Hellboy. He was gigantic and black as pitch and had a voice like deep, rolling thunder. He'd yell, "GET BACK!" and swing his club and you'd should've seen those skinny-ass college kids falling all over themselves to get the fuck out of his way. He was like a secret weapon -- the NFL defensive end they keep on ice until they need to seriously restore order. Once we got a look at Hellboy, we knew the day was fucked but what could we do? We were there to document, so document we did.

The march ended at the corner of 31st and 7th Ave. We were back a couple of blocks at 29th when the cops decided to split the march in two and "open traffic." Their reasoning was murky at best, since the only cars on any of the crosstown streets had flashing red and blue lights. The kids knew what was happening, could sense the heat wanted to pen everybody off separately and they were having none of it. They started screaming and yelling when the cops brought out the barricades. The cops stood around debating, waiting for a White Shirt to show up and tell them what to do. After a huddle, they relented and opened up the barricades, allowing a couple of hundred people to flow north. There was nowhere to go since the cops had every exit blocked from 31st back and it didn't take long for the crowd to stop moving. It was at this point that some crazy asshole on a scooter came tearing ass into the crowd. He knocked the shit out of some lady without so much as "Hello," and laid his bike out on the pavement. Nobody knew who the hell he was and a couple of kids jumped on him and started to beat the crap out of him.

Turns out he was undercover, Scooter Squadron police. Dumb asshole didn't bother to identify himself as an officer of the law or beep his little horn before running over people. Just yee-hawed into a crowd that had nowhere to go. What did he expect those kids to do? Just guess he was a fucking cop and levitate their asses out of there? It was dark, nighttime, nobody could see shit and all of a sudden there's women being hit with what appear to be delivery vehicles. Of course, he got stomped. The cop media would have you believe that Det. Dumbshit was out fighting for truth and justice when a gang of vicious hoodlums attacked him, but anybody that was there knows that's bullshit. Hell, watch the news footage from that night. Even the uniforms didn't know he was a cop. They pulled the kid that was doing the stomping off their brother officer and sent him back into the crowd. It was all right there on the news, but the cops spun it the way they wanted you to hear it and chances are you believed what they told you.

At this stage of the game, all bets were off. One of their own was lying in a pool of his own blood and the cops were seriously pissed. They picked up those fucking barricades and started pushing, despite the fact nobody had anywhere to go. We were falling all over ourselves trying to get the fuck out of their way but they'd blocked off all the exits. They were pushing and pushing and yelling "GET BACK!" and soon it was like a little independent media sandwich on our side of the street. Everybody with a camera where we were had somehow ended up on the northeast corner penned in between cops on the sidewalk and cops on the street. It looked like we were done for. Visions of flex-cuffs and rude downtown behavior flashed before my eyes.

I was pissed. I started screaming, "FUCKING ASSHOLE! FUCKING ASSHOLE!" at the cop directly in front of me, the same cop whose breath I could smell every time he hit me in the chest with that fucking metal barricade. Finally, just when it looked like the cops in front of us and the cops behind us might actually be able to touch hands, a White Shirt appeared out of nowhere and told everybody to cool it. He opened up an escape route and let us go. I got one last shot of the cop I'd been screaming at and it was like looking at a mannequin -- he was over the whole scene. I didn't bother to wait for an apology and booked ass with my team.

Later on that night, we met up with our girl and her boyfriend and caught up on their side of the action. They'd been held in the middle of the street for another hour or so and then the cops let everyone go. We called it a night at that point. My team and I went to tell beers and drink stories, and get ready for Tuesday. It was going to be a big day and we wanted to be straight for it. We were too tired to do much damage and headed home to rest up.

A Plague Descending; Thank God for Rock

2004-09-09T23:58:00.000-04:00

So, I'm at Wakamba tonight. I don't know if you know this place. It's up on 8th Ave. around 37th street. It's cool. It's got this whole island, Carribean thing going for it and all of the chicks that work there dress like sluts. It's really clean. I like this bar. Anyway, I walk in, get my Bud, drain it, order another, and sure enough, the dude next to me has to start talking to me. It's like this guy sits in an office all day and everybody hates him and he can't wait to talk to somebody. I'm pretty good at shit like this so I allow myself to be engaged in conversation.
"You like Spanish chicks?" he asks me.
"Sure, man, whatever."
"They give the best head. Fuck the Mexicans. Too Catholic. The Dominicans, the Cubans, the Puerto Ricans, shit. They'll take your whole dick in their mouth. It's the best."
"Cool."
"So what do you do?"
I lie.
"I work as a janitor at the Hearst Building."
"Really?"
"No shit."
"You voting for Kerry?"
"Yeah."
"You're a fucking idiot."
Just like that. From blowjob tips to telling me I'm a fucking idiot. I remain cool. Say nothing.
"Kerry is going to hand this country to the terrorists. George Bush is the only person we've got who can tell these assholes when enough's enough. I was here when those towers fell. I watched my neighbor die. They should nuke that fucking country."
I'm confused.
"Saudi Arabia?" I ask.
"No! Iraq! Fucking terrorists. They should kill'em all."
"What are you talking about? There weren't any Iraqi terrorists until we created them. We..."
He cuts me off.
"Bullshit! You're like a poster boy for the DNC. Iraq, Iran, Korea, Syria -- we should invade all of 'em."
"What?"
"If Kerry wins, we're going to get attacked again. Those fucking terrorists will overrun us."
"So your answer to the international terrorist problem is to attack four more countries?"
"Fuck yes! And you know what? We'll win."
At this point, the guy goes to pee.
I take the high road, pay my tab, and split.

If there's a stray round out there, I hope this guy catches it right between his fucking eyes. I bet there's a few Marines who'd gladly let this asshole take a bullet for them. Fucking hawks and their grand ideas on what we should do. Like to see this guy going house to house in Najaf. He'd probably be a lot less glib with his guts hanging down around his knees.

I don't pretend to begin to know what it's like to be in combat. Sure, I've had the whole soldier fantasy thing. I worked it out. You don't have to read a whole lot of war books to realize the shit's scary. I believe in the Band of Brothers. I cannot even begin to imagine what it's like to watch your friends get their arms and legs blown off, their brains blown out, see the light fade from their eyes as they piss and shit all over themselves. I'm smart enough to know that war is a dirty, rotten business. Even if I only know it from reading books. That said -- How dare this fucking asshole tell me the answer to all of the world's problems is to keep feeding troops into the machine? What the fuck would he know about any of it? Here's a guy who knows less than I do and he's got a hard-on for killing US soldiers. Can't wait to see them die. Fucking Bush supporters. Hawks and killers. Why get your suit dirty when you can just recruit the shit out of the poor? Give'em no options, recruit'em and send'em off to war. "We'll win." Tell it to their mothers, and then cut their benefits.

Later that same night...

2004-09-08T22:43:00.000-04:00

I came home tonight and my girlfriend was watching last week's Republican National Convention coverage. The W speech. I was immediately revolted, and not because she was watching it. That part I understand. She's a certified information junkie. She's watching it because she watches everything especially if it's important. She can separate herself from her emotions, watch and listen without getting all carried away and feeling the need to scream at the television. I, on the other hand, cannot.
"What the fuck! I hate that cocksucker!"
She hits the pause button, rolls over, opens her arms.
"What the hell do these people expect this motherfucker to say? We know what he's going to say! Fucking asshole!"
She says nothing, beckons me into her embrace.
She's a good one, my girlfriend.
I continue to rant and rave until the speech ends. She patiently ignores me, listens to the whole speech, then puts on last night's Amazing Race. This makes me happy. I so want the Bowling Moms to win, and I'm ecstatic when those asshole twins get eliminated.

After the Race, I convince her to go get a beer with me. It was a good time. We had a couple of drinks, talked about life, love, family, politics. We still stand amazed that people can approach the election of the President of the United States of America with the same kind of blind fanaticism they usually reserve for their favorite sports teams. There is no discussion of the issues with these people, no discourse on who might actually be fit for the office -- they spend more time weighing the pros and cons of soap than they do deciding who might be the best choice as Leader of the Free World.
"Well, Tide does get those tough grass stains out but then again Cheer is a good bargain. What? Of course I'm voting for George W. Bush. He's a Republican."
I've lost all faith in the American people. Not to say I think they're inherently evil. Just stupid to a fault. We all get what we deserve on this one.

So now I'm here in my underwear, listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, chugging Coronas and wondering when the revolution might really begin. I have a dream to rival King's. I dream of a night in January when that smug dumb asshole takes the Oath for the second time and the first salvo is fired in the Second American Revolution. I dream of the dirty poor armed with recently un-banned assault weapons marching on the White House in a pogrom of destruction to rival the sacking of Phnom Penh. I dream of a burnished Marine General, fed up with feeding his troops into the global meat grinder, seizing simultaneous control of the military and burning public sentiment, leading his rebel army to the gates of the castle, public arrests at dawn in the shadow of the Washington Monument. A white, corn-fed, American Che with freedom on his lips and blood on his hands leading us into the light, ending forever our complacency and finally giving us the Third World fantasy we've been entertaining for the last four years.

But I guess that's just me.

Feels Like the First Time

2004-09-08T18:13:00.000-04:00

My first blog and I'm at work. I can't write very much or for very long because I know any minute now somebody's going to bust me doing this instead of making copies or answering the phones or any of the other shit I'm supposed to be doing right now. Anyway, I went through the motions of setting all of this up so I feel like I should at least put something down. Even if it sucks.

Truth be told, the reason I'm doing this is because I've been feeling kinda edgy for the last several years. It started out as a sort of general teenage discontentment with a thinly-veiled layer of anger that evolved into full-on self-destructive twenty-nothing rage, and now that I'm in my 30s, I just feel bewildered and vaguely dangerous. I don't trust myself most of the time, the whole human time-bomb bit. Not that I'm a physically violent person, it's not like that. It's more of an emotional instability, a mental malaise that threatens to take me down from the inside out. I put on a brave face most days and even have a lot of laughs along the way (comedy from tragedy and all that), but really it's been so long since I haven't been pissed off I don't know who I'd be if I wasn't. That's fucked up, but what are you gonna do, huh? At least my girlfriend still loves me.

Okay, I gotta go dump the fucking trash and stock the fridge and work my way towards the door. I'm a production assistant for a hit TV show and these are the kinds of things I do every day. It's not a bad job but really a monkey could do it. Don't get me wrong -- I love being employed and a bad day in show business beats the best day I ever had waiting tables or digging ditches or stocking shelves or any of the other stupid shit I used to do before this gig. This is the only job I've had in the last 13 years where I didn't get dirty doing it. So, it's not the job, per se. It's just that I'd rather be doing anything else, even blogging, than working at any day job.

But, anyway, enough crap for now. I'll try not to sound like such a dipshit the next time I do this. I haven't really figured out what I'm trying to say, yet, or how to say it. I'll get there.