January 2004 Archives

words words words. had some around somewhere. sure of it.

checked draft status, discovered it was an appropriate status for the words found there. shuffled through boxes cluttered with scribbled half-ideas, wondered why i've formed such an attachment to recyclables. words.

code now, code, i've written a shitload of that this past week. technically mostly completely frivolous however ... there is a reason. not an excuse. just a practical, resigned sort of reasonable accomodation i make for myself, though (i tell myself) i don't deserve it and can't afford it. the point is i find that i cannot discipline myself any more than my parents could after i hit the age of rebellion. i have that same unerring knack for taking an intractable stance against the unfairness (not getting what i want) and remain relentless until that changes.

and the fact is i've been yearning to geek out heavily, but i would not give myself the time. no, there was work to be done. work dammit work. so the stubbornness kicked in and what got done was nothing. i nagged and berated myself for this but nothing changed. (self-defeating spiral). i whined to friends and heard the same things i tell myself, didn't listen.

so finally i gave up. installed a comments system on the gallery, improved the stats considerably, and figured out how to make it do two thumbnails on every upload, one for the gallery one to include in the blog. at this point attempted to point my self at the work and in the process became obsessed with upgrading lizard radio with a flash mp3 player instead of the klunky old php/javascript/windows media dealy that only works in the evil browser. to accomplish this it was necessary to write a php script that pulls the playlist out of the mysql database and writes an xml file for the flash player to use.

so i did that.

i also decided i liked the little flashplayer so much that i wanted to use it locally. where there is no php. in order to make the playlist i had evil media do a search for mp3s, saved the playlist, discovered it was written in SMIL which is ... close enough. a little while later i'd turned that into XML and then and then i had to make the player prettier and now and now i am ... i have so many more things i want to do. i have discovered new and exciting uses for flash and also i will say that flash mx annoys the hell out of me i mean it's annoying how do i resist this?

i am sorry for the boring. i hadda do something man.

"you're not one of those people who are afraid of high places, are you?"

she asks me this as i'm swinging the second leg over the windowsill and dropping softly to the roof below, a nice flat bit of roof a good 4 feet wide at least.

"up until last year i couldn't even stand on a chair. i would edge along second floor apartment balconies as close to pressed up against the wall as possible, because it felt like i was getting sucked over the edge."

she grabs my hand to steady me, "i didn't know!"

i gently pull away, tell her i'm fine, no way to express just how good this is, this standing here on the first roof of my whole life, picking up the two errant window screens and (as instructed) tossing them onto the patio below.

i'm surprised i hadn't told her, i've certainly recounted the story countless times, how i conquered my fears of heights and spiders by climbing up on furniture with my camera. now, when i say conquer, i don't mean conquer like clobber, crush, lick, master, overcome, prevail, surmount, trample underfoot, trash, or vanquish, not like that. no, my story has more of a conquistador vibe: travel to undiscovered lands, glance around nervously, claim some shit i have absolutely no right to, run home. sit around talking long shit about my journey to the cobwebs and beyond. and boring the living snot out of anyone who would sit still looking like they might be listening.

it's gonna be even worse now. i've been on a roof.

so my son loses all his jackets at school. so i picked up an inside out blue sweatshirt in the lost & found thinking it was his. well, turn it rightside out turns out it's a school sweatshirt, his was plain. so i tell him here, wear it & then when it gets warm out, put it back in the lost & found (or just lose it again like all the others, ya know?)

i toss him the sweatshirt. he won't wear it. he says it's kimberly's. well there are hundreds of these identical school sweatshirts, they sell 'em to raise funds & such, how does he know it's kimberly's?

he tells me, because "it smells like kimberly"

it smells like kimberly.

perspective:

today the daughter & i, struggling to open a bottle of champagne: she tries, hands it to me. i try, i fail. she shows me the bandages, blood draws in both arms (she's an eggdonor, there are tests & shit). i take the bottle, the cork comes out easy. i have no injuries to my inner elbows caused by rough phebotomists, i have no excuse, therefore, easy, right?

fuckin' a.

oh & for those of you that missed the state of the union here are some cliff's notes:

we got saddam! we got 'im! sheeit, we done got that saddam oh hell yeah we fucking nailed that saddam fucker. the patriot act means freedom. open the borders so we can put plenty mexicans to work driving this economy forward! the american people love a good corporate scandal! get drugs out of the schools & give them to old people! except steroids, don't give those to anyone! and we got saddam, the american people can sleep safe at night knowing there was no saddam left behind, also saddam is in custody have i mentioned saddam? & nukular shit in general? be afraid while we keep you safe. vote for us.

weapons of mass destruction related program activities. i swearta fucking god a direct quote, i ran to my 'puter laughing hard & sardonic to make sure i got it word for word, i hurried. weapons of mass destruction related program activities. that makes it alllllll worth it.

fuckin' a.

so you know, when you're driving along & doing ... i dunno, something, *not* picking your nose, but something involving some vigorous hand-related activity in the vicinity your face, something like maybe rubbing your itchy nose (externally) & you accidentally jam a finger right up your nose & it happens to be one of the ones with the actual fingernails & it hurts like a mofo & so then you're driving along sniffling with your eyes watering like mad hoping your nose is just running & not actually bleeding, thinking damn why is everything a metaphor for my life?

yeah.

why i friggin' love google, chapter seventeen verse twelve:

entering a query for "tool - merkaba" & google returns this query, verbatim:

offtoseethelizard.com/index.php?view=uartist&what=tool

listing all the listings for the unique artist, tool. which is not precise, but still. they get my MySQL query. they get me. that rocks me.

so i'm wondering what will be the 700th lyric. who will decide? will it be you? do you get me darlin'?

ohbytheway

thisisme

not gloating or anything. no.

you know that cheesy movie, called billie jean or billie jo (not billy jack) it was about this teenage runaway outlaw folk hero chick named billie jean or jo, i think it was helen slater in the role, & anyway she's on the lam, isn't that what outlaws go on, the lam? & she had this totally obvious long blonde hair & they're going to catch her or something so she goes into this bathroom with scissors & just grabs handfuls of her hair & starts hacking it off randomly & when she's done she has this fabulously stylish chunky punky totally outlaw 'do and then every chick in america does the exact same thing so da man can't find our billie jean?

i swearta god.

what? of course it's just a movie. of course a fabulous stylist actually cut the actual hair. that doesn't mean i can't do it. that doesn't mean i won't. that doesn't mean i will.

pat benatar did the theme song. i can't remember the name of the song offhand but give me a minute. my poor head is so full of useless trivia. and i tried to make a detour through pink but i couldn't bleach out enough orange without obliterating the hair entirely, so it's now a neon coral, *not* pink. the solution of course is to remove the too-much-orange hair with scissors. this doesn't mean i will. this doesn't mean i won't.

so there was rammstein. there were the four boys playing PS2, by committee apparently, loud to be heard over the game itself, which was way too loud. just not loud enough to drown out the sound fucking rammstein taking themselves way, way too seriously. overlooking the fundamental absurdity of everything in general & teutonic manic industrious industrial march metal in particular. i considered being amused by the irony of it all but that would mean thinking & i was fading fast

my captors continued to torment me, using one of the most lethal psychological attacks ever invented: being a room full of small boys. i mean, it catches you by surprise, again & again, you look at their shiny little faces & think, oh, it can't be that bad, sure a little annoying, but harmless. oh yeah they're real harmless. oh. yeah. shiny happy faces holding your MIND in their grubby little hands because they are that special kind of annoying that wears you down in the most remorseless relentless manner imaginable oh don't let this happen to you run run while there's still time
i cracked, man, i mean i lost it, dude. there i was with some pudding & a doll arm with a hand eye stuck to an ex bottle of glitterpolish & some pudding. ok not stuck to the pudding so much as stuck in the pudding.

butterscotch.

so last night i sat up for hours entertaining some pain. this is the second tooth to go like this, the nerve in a wanna be root canal giving up waiting for the dentist & committing suicide. in my life, this feels liks sparks. this *sounds* like sparks. i have tooth pain i can hear, & clearly. i have a lot of electricity in this body, & believe me, when it's good it's very good, & when it's bad, it's a fucking mini-taser going off in my gums like SNAP it goes just like that SNAP

laying there in the quiet dark not moving a muscle because of this fear that anything, anything, any impulse traveling down any neurons anywhere, might somehow provoke or prolong the enemy action in my face, i searched for ways to deal with it. i could see the red-orange gleam of the gameboy charging unit on the dresser, so i used that as a focal point & tried to breathe through it or whatever it is those annoying nurses tell you to do when you're having a contraction & fuck breathing it's time to scream & kick anyone that tries to put my foot in that fucking stirrup got it? so what do i know about breathing techniques? nothing.

so then i tried to visualize the little gleaming led was the pain, so i closed my eyes & changed it to a soothing blue white color. kinda aqua actually. however this is not the sort of pain that is impressed by that touchy feely new agey stuff, this is rude crude socially unacceptable pain politically incorrect pain that doesn't give a fuck pain that stands scowling its best badass scowl & growls, so do ya feel lucky punk?

and then i thought, what the fuck?

why does this electricity have such power over me? i fucking own the shit! i manufactured it out of raw materials in my spare fucking time! these are my sparks, this is my pain. and so i stopped reacting to it with the same response that i imagine some distant ancestor of mine would have, when he would have been almost inventing fire but having a few technical difficulties & "ow! ow! fire hurt og! fire bad!" & so mankind went without heat & cooked food for another buncha years before someone finally figured out fire safety & ... where was i? right, i was saying yeah, we're wired for stupid, we homo sapiens. we have this elaborate security system in place to warn us about shit that's bad for us, even if we already know. yes, i am aware how important it is to get to the dentist, & i will when i can, but right now i cannot. & no there is no cheap easy answer sitting right around here overlooked, i really can't go just yet. so this pain is of no use to me. you could say it keeps the urgency first & forefront, but you'd be wrong, because it won't -- i suppose it could, but it just doesn't -- this neuron seppuku that teeth do, it's wild painful for a good three days or a week, then it subsides & everything's bearable.

& so i focused my thoughts, my mind my body my whole attention on this pain. i followed it around & watched it work. i observed it, i tracked it, i measured it. i did not try to separate my self from the pain, good or bad right or wrong it is part of me, it belongs to me, it is mine, & mine alone. & gathered all my stubborn bitch™ brand logic (i've had this since adolescence, you can ask my parents, it's relentless) & decided that i was not going to let a bunch of electro-chemical reflexes be the boss of me. logically, this sensation i have in my mouth my cheekbones my eye sockets etc is no different from any other sensation i have, well, no different than say, the sound of the crooked cricket i call my conscience is from a humvee car alarm that goes off all night long at 175 decibels outside your bedroom window while its owner sleeps off the twenty year old scotch. you know? they're both sounds, one's just a wee bit more annoying.

so i still laid around much if not all of today wrapping my belief system around this, & practicing meeting the pain when it comes without that whining & cringing, trying to be matter of fact about it, calm & unfearful, unruffled like an accountant telling that stoner from purchasing that i simply will not approve any more orders for office supplies that have a first ingredient of sugar. & i did it without disassociating myself from my pain, people disassociate out of fear, i am not afraid. the pain is here, it is inside me, an integral part of my existence. "life is pain, highness. anyone who tells you something different is selling something"

pain is interesting when you're not sitting around frantically trying to make it go away. i'll never like it like it, that's not my thang, but i don't have to react to it like dear old great×75324 uncle og did when he was failing to manage to make fire work for him.

i still haven't quite got the hang of pain + sleep. it's like having a lonely tweaker friend show up & decide to spend the night, in 100000 words or more if they can manage. which is fine, it's not like i fear sleep deprivation, i'm pretty damn good company, even when i'm having problems with this fucked up wiring system of mine.

i gotta watch it a lot i'm better at this than you
i gotta swallow the part that wasn't easy to chew
i got my knife in the back when i was young and unmade
i built a doorstep for you don't leave the things you're afraid of on mine

i am better at this than you, you know. well you do now. oh not you! personally. this is some figurative shit, i assure you. & not even derivative. no it's out & out plagiarism with attribution as if that excuses it, which in this case it does, more or less. it's all 1's & 0's man. & i am better at that than you, that's for goddamn sure. a rule proven by its exceptions, if such a thing exists. if.

i built my house in the mud because i want to stay clean
my windows are all broken i can't afford gasoline
i dance around in a twist thinking what luck it will bring
i watch pedestrians stalk hoping they'll get their little fingers
on time on time on time

time is the most malleable dimension, all fluidity in motion & all & always different from each & every perspective for ever & ever amen. i love & am in love with time, head & heels transposed in a tumbling rush yes this is love, this is my love

i'm thinking this will be better when this is over
sitting on my bed getting un-sober
sleeping in the park hey man scoot over
vagrant as it seems it's alright

amen i say oh yeah amen baby

don't let it go to your head without a place it can stay
you can't give back what you stole by looking the other way
i'm gonna spit it out now you've gotta swear not to peek
because i've already been to where no one cares a thing about time
about time about time about time

it disappoints me in myself that i rely completely on someone else's words to say exactly what i mean but the way words connect things to me i have been forced to get used to it. these are john lombardo's, 'chrome jehovah'.

of all the hung up mistakes with names that i never knew
and you should listen to me because there've been quite a few
there's no way they can connect with what it is you and me do
before the laugh starts to happen after the screaming is through
about time about time about time

unless of course i'm wrong. i'm better at this than you but that doesn't make me right it only makes me sit & grin sardonic & feel the way this feels when it cracks my rough dry lips i lick them again against my better judgement i blame winter for this but it's my fault inadvertent & i do wish this was an unusal sort of thing for me, don't you?

thinking i'll be better when this is over.

men. pfft.

far be it from me to speak ill of the vaginally impaired. as a matter of fact some of my bestest friends are penis-americans. it's not like i'd want my daughter to marry one, but i don't have much choice, she didn't turn out quite as gay as i woulda hoped. this is my future son-in-law, he's not so bad i guess:

& while i try to be open minded & fair & balanced & am loathe to address any group of individuals as a whole, i find i must toss all that p.c. hooha aside & ask: what the fuck is wrong with you guys? hmm? anyone wanna take a shot at explaining this to me? yes it's a general question being asked in a generalizing way & so what? i've generally about had it up to here with ... with you people. up to here.

bah. men. can't live with 'em, can't chop 'em up in bite size pieces & feed 'em to homeless puppies.

ed. note: i got a bsod while writing this & failed to get a picture, so i rebooted & went about getting another one, thinking, you know, now that i want one, i won't be able to. ha. took three minutes. fucking windows me.

additional note: persons of the male variety who wear dresses on occasion & are willing to submit photographic proof of this to me are exempted from the afore-ranted nonsense.

what? oh these. i was just going to go out & trim the hedges. yeah.

my daughter's roommates have gone quite insane:

but that's okay, so has her mother:

the ability to stick stickers on our guitars is what separates us from the animals:

whatever you are here wondering what i'm not doing, i will be right back at it as soon as i finish transporting my offspring around town. it's been a day.

...and then it hit me. about fucking time, i thought, i mean i was about done with the waiting which means nothing if you think about it which is why i try not to do that. as usual i wallow so musically, it's all about the soundtrack & this is the most meaningful thing i'll say all day today.

the extent of the beauty of the world around me pains me so on days like this one. i feel it physically, not pain actually more like an ache really, the pains come randomly sharp like clarity momentous occasionally oh fuck this noise let's you/me get the fuck outta here/now i mean it this time

& with that, release is ours

what? yeah. just like that. why not? simple easy free

oh okay i know no not really

nice try though

when you are paranoid & have observed a rather relentless fruitfly hovering hungrily around your beer you will peer anxiously into its greenly amber depths over & over never convinced that you are not missing the small speck of his death by drowning & while this might have been a serious issue to you once you are no longer the phobic mess you once were there have been so many of those changes, smells like progress might be numbness as if that matters (it doesn't, trust me) & so on &

on & fine, it's fine it is & i am & aside from the beer(s) there is the can beside them (sparks) for a while there were three open containers on the table beside the laptop due to an outing waiting for the train with the daughter sitting tossing back some cold ones (ice cold) talking about epileptic karma & eggnog performance art vomiting & love

so the train came the girl left & i brought these beers home not drunk but quite delightfully illegal in the mere possession of their openness oh yes i was this outlaw & also this one full one the girl laid on my seat beside me, sweetness indeed my daughter sharing this beer she bought all newly twentyone &

i have no segue to where i say i've been listening to outkast & thinking, hey ya & oh yeah & so forth & so what?

everything i needed to say has been said, under my breath, to my self, then typed into a notepad window & saved in case time & circumstances collide with blood alcohol levels & influenced fierce needs in sufficient quantity to warrant a sending. hopefully healing will intervene & allow a simple deletion in the meantime.

whatever (is the title of the file. it is whatever.txt). doesn't that sound just like something you wouldn't want to send if you cared about sounding, oh i dunno, grownup? though the wisest advice i received sounded like this & made the most sense "you should be all, like, whatever". my daughter is wise beyond her overuse of the colloquial "all, like", which is damn evocative & an efficient means of communicating things it would take me many minutes & burn too many mindcalories to express otherwise. yes i realize working the brain out is a good thing, however i need to burn in another direction right now, i have certain urgencies (in a word, work).

whatever. i added a shitload of pictures to the galleries while contemplating getting back into the rhythm of code by integrating recent gallery additions into the blog design so i could quit mixing my obvious photobloggeristic tendencies with actual blogging. of course this would mean far fewer posts since i am all about the photographic metaphor these days & that is, i assure you, for the best.

my toilet is still bubbling & has issues with the whole "flush" issue, however it is not overflowing onto my bathroom floor so i am thankful. also the shower is no longer filled with darkly sniffarific sludge. again, thankful. thankful shall be the word of the day, rather than whatever. or perhaps i should combine them: "whatever. thankful." or "thankful, whatever."

&/or commit ritual seppuku with a frisbee?

If you succeed, everybody will be like

conversing with a six year old:
kid: what kind of games did you like?
me: oh, monopoly, clue, stuff like that.
kid: on playstation?
me: no, we didn't have playstations.
kid: on computers?
me: we didn't have computers.
me: we didn't have video games, we didn't have computers, we didn't have cable tv. we had three channels and we had to get them with an antenna on the roof. sometimes we couldn't get them.
kid: ... what did you do?
me: we read books.
kid: oh. i guess you were really smart.
me: yeah ...

this is Jen's story.
this is Jen's donation page (click the button below). her doctor's given her the go-ahead to train for the three day breast cancer walk this july.

i'm putting this in the sidebar, but i wanted it up here to start the new year.

GO JEN!!