Slavery Tastes Better

Slavery Tastes Better

The first indication I had that it was Saturday was the fact that it was no longer Friday, that, or else the sun had stayed up for a very very long time. I was leaning toward Saturday, but Sunday was not entirely out of the question as well. Binge drinking is weird like that. Time no longer progresses predictably or in a linear fashion. A good many of us binge drinkers are, in fact, with hazy brain, trying to solve the secrets of time travel, if only so that we can go back in time and see all the things we can't remember doing over the years.

The first person I talked to after being released back into the wild was Solara, who I had tried to call from inside and who I wanted to let know I was alright. I had in fact only needed her help in communicating to my various employers my whereabouts and prognosis for the near-term future. Having been otherwise unable to discuss this simple matter to Solara directly I feared that she had possibly gone off the deep end trying to assist me in my apparent time of need. We talked for a second and the subject of my getting the last remnants of my stuff that Solara had held on to for me since we lost the house came up and we agreed to get together at some time friday.

Friday began with my talking with my editor and finding that there were two assignments still available for me at this late point so I determined that I would try and go to the one that evening, and failing that I would no problem be able to go to the one Saturday night. Quite elated I then went as planned to the gas station for cigarettes, and being in the sort of mood that comes upon a gonzo journalist when fortune turns her head to our creative endeavors, got a twelve pack of Natural Ice, my beer of choice. If the opportunity to go to the assignment on Friday panned out--such as another fortuneful ride from my friend Daniel the Music Guru--I wanted to already be drunk so that I wouldn't spend my entire income derived from going on the assignment on the beers necessary to get it accomplished. The average person may wonder, why drink at all?, but the only reasonable answer to that question is the question posed by all of us in professional journalism, that being, what point is there in doing anything if you can't do it drunk or high or both?. No matter, our reputation is still better than astronauts.

Dinky sent me a text message early friday morning with the picture of a side of a Uhaul and a "Did You Know" on the side that said something along the lines of (paraphrasing) "Did you know that scientists monitor solar wind, changes in solar activity, and the electromagnetic troposphere to predict weather on our own planet. For more information about Space Weather go to UHaul(dot)com." Dinky then added the words, "I guess N.A.S.A. is no longer the authority." Just after I purchased my cigarettes I looked on the back, where the Camel Bucks used to be, and there I found this tremendous kernal of information.



To which I added the postscript, "Slavery Tastes Better". Once I got started on the Natural Ice's I don't remember a whole lot else about friday, except that at some reasonable time in the mid-evening Solara tried to call me to make good on our pact as far as transfer of my belongings but I was already so intoxicated I knew it would not be in my best interest to try and see Solara (or anyone else).

I woke up confused Saturday, mildly, eventually putting together the story of how I ended up back in my bed, and happy to find out no out-of-ordinary drunken madness had taken place the night before. There was talk that I had stayed up until five in the morning giggling, every once in a while stopping long enough to say "Coach" or "C.K.", but I am not sure what to make of such speculation. Friends were coming to visit us from Montgomery, and I wasn't sure if it was someone I knew already or not, but luckily I had enough beers left over from the night before (mysteriously I had reupped on beer at some point)so be good and drunk well before noon. I wanted to make sure and be completely ready for my assignment to report on the band and atmosphere that night at the Olde Auburn Ale House, one of my favorite places in Auburn ever since the time I spent living in the Heart of Auburn and walking to the Ale House to get blasted drunk every day for two months.

And that's when I met him.

C.K. (you can't see the "X's" he has drawn on his own hands, indicating his "Straight-Edge" leanings.)

C.K. is not like your regular person. You know. The type that has a father and maybe both parents or maybe no dad at all, probably has a career or something and maybe a girlfriend and a dog. No, C.K. is nothing like that. C.K. stands for "Coach's Kid". This is the closest we have come in all of our travels to actually meeting the illustrious and mysterious Coach! I was very dismayed and intrigued to learn that C.K. is very much a straight-edge, Jesus-Freaking, Sober good time having guy. He doesn't drink, smoke, or smoke. As soon as C.K. and his girl from Montgomery showed up we went to the grocery store, where I was able to reup on corn dogs, french fries, and more beer (seemed like a good idea to go ahead and get that taken care of just in case). A gambling debt was paid off to me on arrival back home in the form of a bottle of Evan Williams (uh oh), and Wii bowling ensued.

Later in the evening, long after my ability to focus or remember my assignment had passed, C.K. reminded me about my assignment, so the three of us, C.K., his girl from Montgomery, and I went to the Ale House where the scheduled band had already cancelled and we were confronted with the meager prospect of a fill-in band, which I wasn't sure either nullified my assignment or not. I was excited after talking with the lead singer and learned they cited Medeski, Martin, and Wood as influences. Disappointment followed, however, when I was not allowed to drink inside the Ale House (my I.D. was confiscated after my latest brush with Uncle Sam), but I was able to take the following pictures of dancing girls and guitar playing that look eerily like the mental state I was in at this point. My notes on the names of the band members, what I remember to be the band's myspace address, and C.K.'s personal contact information was on a napkin I later spilt a beer on and then our dog ate so my subsequent article lacked these details.


Girls Dancing to Cacti.


Not Sure.


A guitarist for Cacti


My favorite picture, reminiscent of Charles Peterson's famous photography of the band Nirvana.

Panorama of the Tennessee River Valley

Panorama of the Tennessee River Valley



For our senior year English Project we were instructed to make a home video interpreting our hometown, al la "Our Town". My group partners were Erik Alexander, Daniel Colon, Walton Bradford and JT Nelson. Aside from JT, all of us had played football together, but still had different perspectives on Scottsboro. My greatest interest in the project was that I was going to be allowed to do the musical composition, and my mind began earnestly working on putting together what sound clips I could think of wanting absolutely, whether it fit the footage we ended up making or not. One Saturday morning we all met up and drove around in Walton's SUV, and aside from a few serendipitous clips of the five of us goofing off, we got a lot of the typical high-light spots in the area. The crowning achievement was that one of us happened to know that the house on the bluff at the top of Sand Mountain, just as you reach Section, was for sale and we could get a really good panoramic shot of Scottsboro from the back porch. The shot came together perfectly, and I remember the realtor and a client showed up just as we were leaving. Walton and I talked on our trip up and down the mountain and I told him how I wanted someday for my family to be something like his--deeply intertwined in the lifeblood of the community. Walton also provided for the project a home video with several montages from the 1940's and 1950' of Scottsboro, and with that tape, the one we had recorded, and my expansive CD collection, I went to work that night and through Sunday trying to put together a cohesive collage of images and music. I came up with an ingenious procedure--remember, this is 1997, and our ability to digitally enhance or manipulate video like what in the present-day is considered rudimentary was far beyond my reach. So I used a system of two VCR's and our family's camcorder to splice in the right sounds, video, and music all at the same time. By the time Sunday Evening wore into the wee hours I felt good about what I had put together. The video started with "Thus Spoke Zarathrusta", otherwise known as the Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey, as the panographic view of the river valley and the town of Scottsboro faded into focus. Then, during the classic video's I used "Mr. Eliminator" by Dick Dale and The Del-Tones (famous for the opening song "Misirlou" on Pulp Fiction), and then with trailing shots of the river from water level I used "Blue Danube", and as it wound down and I pieced a couple of the shots of Erik, Walton and Daniel goofing off I used "Far Behind", by Candlebox and then as the exiting credits rolled out I used the music from The Innocent Mission song "Bright as Yellow", which was from the Empire Records soundtrack which I believe I had borrowed from either Daniel or Erik. We received an "A" for our project (which was due the next day, in true procrastinator style), and almost won the competition pitting all the video's against one another.

For the last few days I have had the song "Bright as Yellow" stuck in my head, along with "Waiting for the Sun" by The Doors, and "Black Magic Woman" by Santana. Understandably, an eclectic mix, and I can only explain "Black Magic Woman" from the amount of Guitar Hero I have been absorbing both while awake mildly drunk and while passed out massively drunk. The next day after the multi-venue Vargas Sponsored Guitar Hero Exhibition I realized that I had a Doors song I did not immediately recognize stuck in my head, so I asked Isabella the next time I saw her if there was a Doors song on Guitar Hero, which she said there wasn't, and I was stuck trying to remember what song I might have ingrained in my mind since I had no Door's CD's to refer to. Isa said that she didn't believe that there was a single Doors song in her cd changer in her car. I hadn't been able to narrow it down, assuming that it was either the first few bars of "Spanish Caravan" or "When the Music's Over" that had somehow, in some strange twist of chemical abuse, been isolated and repeated for hours on end in my waking and sleeping mind. Then, three days ago, with the mystery deepening since I am often times enlightened by the dreams and/or music that continued to reoccur in my life at particular times, I sat down to check out YouTube and play every Doors song I could find--and the very first one that came up in my search was "Waiting For The Sun", which was one of my favorites for years, and I immediately realized that had been the song, even more so than the Santana or Innocent Mission song's, that had been racking my brain.

Music is amazing in the way that it can bring us back to a moment in time or places and people that we remember fondly, and the discovery of new music highlights the present moment with something our heart and mind can grasp later to re experience the same thing again.

Last week, after spending most of my paycheck getting a Money order so that I can bail Dinky's computer out of the tow-shop and then buying a few other things, I was walking through the local General Store I happened across a sign that promised CD's for 99 Cents and had a picture of the Nine Inch Nail's CD "Pretty Hate Machine", which I knew was worth at least 99 Cents. So I go to the rack and of course none of the good CD's were left, but I stumbled across the first Gangsta Boo CD "Both Worlds *69" and the Project Pat CD Mista Don't Play (Everythangs Workin). I knew the Project Pat CD was awesome, as it had basically been the theme CD for 2001-2002 for the Party Haven Crew and Dexter Phillips's and I's numerous random road trips. I bought the Gangsta Boo CD because there was one song by her that I randomly downloaded years ago and had become a perpetual classic in my rotation, but I had never known the name. For 99 Cents, I was excitedly willing to give "Both Worlds.." a try. As soon as I got back to the house I put in the Gangsta Boo CD, and while I was happy to hear it sounded just like every other 3*6 Mafia/Project Pat/Hypnotize Camp Posse album, it did not have the song I wanted. So, as I listened to my favorites from the Project Pat CD I researched the only lyric from the song that I could remember and determined that the song I wanted was called "Who We Be", and used an online service to download it for free. The screw-style rap music of 3*6 always immediately brings me back to those years running with Dexter, Ronnie "T-Bird" Langston, Vodski and Boo around the environs of Scottsboro, Section and Skyline, creating havoc and adventure everywhere we went. The folks up here in the Northeast don't get it quite like we do, so I listen to the CD's and "Who We Be" when no one else is around, or I'm too drunk to care. Our other major rap-group/label that we liked back then was No Limit, and the 504 Boyz CD "Goodfellas-Ball Till You Fall", along with "Mista Don't Play" and the Bush album "Razorblade Suitcase" are the only albums I have purchased more than 4 times each. It amazes me how many people mistake the rapper Krazy from 504 with Tupac. My most favorite song in all of rap, aside from Gangsta Party by Tupac and Snoop Dogg, is song number 20 on "Goodfellas...", the last on the album, "Souljas". Every time I listen to it it reminds me of the Party Haven Crew, and the fact that I am more than fairly confident T-Bird still has "Goodfellas--Ball Till You Fall" in his CD book.

Black Cat and Pants (Retrospective Prophecy)

Black Cat and Pants (Retrospective Prophecy)


"All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance... But few of us know it"
---Albert Camus



Walking across the Auburn University Campus at night is like walking across a frozen dream--deserted, forgotten, so full of vital life only hours before. The setting of the sun earlier and earlier each day depresses the shit out of me, and I always hope I can hold on through one more winter until the promise of spring once again....I've been reading a lot lately, which isn't solice for a heart unfulfilled, but seems to nonetheless connect us with those who have felt longingly before.....I crossed a black cat's path on the way to the library and wonder about the superstitious ramifications of such a move....

Every love I have ever had is gone forever and I am coming more and more to the grips of that realization with each passing minute and hour--I might be alone until the end of time, which is only the summer of 2012 if Nostradameus or anyone else has any say in the matter. I almost got knifed by Dinky's sister Bunnie the other day because I professed my disbelief in Nostradameus and if that is a capitol offense I might not make it until 2012....I only believe in stuff that makes sense, or that I have percieved personally, which are usually two totally divergant paths so who cares? I don't think the big guy is keeping score even if He cares....

I've got a plan, which might come as news to anyone else who has been keeping score, but it mostly revolves around my coming closer to the mystery of who I am. I wonder endlessly if a person can divert the heartfelt worship of women in general and unrequited love towards two women that he cannot be failed by romantically. I wonder what it is like to have two grandparents who are alive, and maybe even a biological father who remembers you. All questions only time can answer, right??

The bus grinds north as soon as $115 cash can be brought to bear on the Enemy, and the Enemy is Time and Space.

I like little saloons where you can sit down and drink a beer in peace and mourn the passing of someone like Eval Knevil and rumifacate on the end of the world in uninteruppted, staccato sentances without syntax or meaning. No one cares what you really mean as long as you have cash or something that passes for it until the cops come.

I remember once my mother called me excitedly to tell me about a pair of pants that she bought me, and this must have been within days of my finding a pair of Unionbay pants that I fell in love with and then, after a day or two of wearing them, became incredibly afraid they may have belonged to my friend Susan. After I found out this suspicion was untrue I still couldn't bring myself to wear the pants nearly as enthusiastically as I had originally.

I ran out on a bill once in Downtown Charleston, at the Mellow Mushroom that reminded me of the fact that, despite being an obvious pinwheel of my group of friends the first time I lived in Auburn, I had never been to the infamous MM downtown. My wife of the time and I think a couple friends and I darted through the beautific apocalyictically styled eighteenth century decor to the heartbeat of war drums half a world away. The Iraq War came at a particular time in my life, and will prove to be a particular time in the timespan of my entire generation that hails for digital mania and constant entertainment. We were raised on video games and murderous movies and entertainment, and were grown to be the most perfect killers history had ever seen. We are good, and know it, and waste no time in niceties.

It hit me the other day that all three of my literary heros, for the first time, it really hit me that all three were dead, and that I could remember the moment I had learned each was dead---HST, Feb 20, 2005, JH DEc 12, 1999, KV Ap 11, 2007. The death of each had brought a tear to my eye, and I remember distinctly, the day that I learned Kurt Vonnegut was dead was just before my birthday this year, and I spent my birthday in almost complete solitude, drinking drinks for us both in retrospect. I could have been at the outdoor cafe at the end of the world with any of the three, for eternity, and felt complete. I wonder if any of my journals will be one day found and of interest to someone other than a future vainly driven version of myself. I wonder if I will spawn an entire generation of copycats, and if the world could sustain such economic and social pressure. I remember the time Eminem walked into the Grammy's with a line of a hundred clones and declared his dominance on the game and I wonder what uniform I should require of my neophytes.

I wonder if a sexual encounter counts if it wasn't complete, but you still feel satisfied. Does a job well done more depend on your own, or the object's, satisfaction? What is satisfaction in a world gone hypermodern haywire? Do people in big cities still care about nature?

I remember the feeling of sacrificing everything twice---not two different sets of sacrifices, but the same ones, made twice, and knowing deep down that the objects and possessions could never be replaced or returned. I remember the regret and guilt, felt as a combined double factor of ten because it was coming both from the feelings of attachment to these things, and also, the ideas of such or the opposite, loss of everything. Now I would rather keep my possessions to fitting neatly and without cramming into a boyscout backpack, but keep these conspiracies to myself in mixed company.

I walked out today on the home I've had for a few months and a new person I met today asks--"What, you're not even going to say goodbye?" and I respond, "No, I'm a sailor, and saying goodbye is bad luck--everyone knows that"---and I wonder how many times I have left a bad impression by not saying goodbye. At heart I am a sailor, and it is bad luck to say goodbye, as it tends to lead to never returning...

We all die alone, or with gawkers who don't know what the light really means, so what else is there? I can accept that. I am not angry, nor am I afraid of eternity, alone, bitter, always cold on holidays and never clean enough. Who will notice? I stain every nice shirt I have.....

The need to escape is always tantamount and compared to the need for security.

I have a hundred lost friends, I have a hundred lost loves, I have a hundred dreamt dreams and invisible enemies. Keep score, because this is gonna be good. Sometimes we cannot recognize the destination for the journey. Most of my friends can only see the line item, and I hardly ever read the title. At the end of the day all of our shortcomings equal one well adjusted adult, so probably, we'll make it in this world if we stick together.

Basic Life InCohesion

Basic Life Incohesion

As always the last few days have been interesting and as luck would have it circumstances have conspired to place me in the right place and right frame of mind to record some of the more interesting intersecting of circumstances.

This evening my friend Dinky and I went out to eat after I got off work after a few rather deflating moments with some females of interest. Why is it every time you might start to like someone the VERY NEXT time you see them they talk about some other guy they are dating, if they don't just BRING them with?? Is it just me?

Anyways we end up spending a combined fifty dollars on steak and eggs and pancakes and an appetizer that arrived about half an armful before the main course which is almost exactly enough to make me, the habitual non-complainer (especially in resturants) into the guy waiting for the fat manager to walk around again so that I can vent. But even better---then the guy comes outside while Dinky and I smoke cigarettes waiting for our to-go order for a friend like he's afraid we are gonna walk out on our ticket. And the syrup wasn't even warm. Maybe he should be rubbing his fat titties on the bottles of syrup to warm them up before they bring some colder than room temperature syrup for me to not enjoy. Thanks.

The benefit was Dinky and I talked about a composition of some sort that we are gonna co-write about how we used to love the internet when it was simple. All this "progress" (other than Myspace) is really just vamped up consumerism and an attempt to woo mindless zombies away from TV's and to the You(boob)Tube. (considering I hardly ever talk about breasts, it is quite a feat I have mentioned them three times thus far! Chico is rubbing off on me...)

The other new thing going on is that I have been getting ready to relaunch HC-LotDE, inviting new "friends" (readers) to the profile, trying to touch base with the more important artists, etc. When I am inviting people, and considering I am a single heterosexual male, it is no doubt natural that I would tend to pay more attention to the cute girl profiles (which are VERY few and far between in the wells of political activism, counterculturalism, and literary arts that I pull from) and I ran across this one girl whose profile included the following:

..> ..>

About me: i just wanna be somebody's zelda fitzgerald.

Who I'd like to meet: i'm running out of ethnic friends.

..> ..>

General	none, whining, learning big words then forgeting what they mean, attempting to mooch off the government, appearing clingy, keeping warm, commiting suicide, bulking up for winter, being mean.
Music	bad music for bad people.
Movies	the flower that drank the moon.
Television	my super sweet sixteen is the voice of my generation.
Books	animals no one loves and BRAINPOWER

...and who doesn't believe I Love a couple of THOSE things?? Already I've got more in common with this girl than all my wives added together. Unfortunately also her profile included the following information:

Female
90 years old
manhatin', New York
United States

...no help on the age front. Manhatten is awesome but slightly far away. Except when you REALLY think about it, like when you are really drunk and high or run into someone from high school in a totally different state unexpectedly---then you FEEL like the world is REALLY small---when it isn't---it's freaking HUGE!---have you ever walked to the grocery store? And not even the closer grocery store, but the one that is twice as far but half as expensive. Yeah, the world is at least a million times bigger than that! Anyways my bio-mom and sister live near The City (NYC is the only city that can be referred to, from any distance by anyone, as "The City"), and Dinky and I are planning on trying to make it to NYC soon for an art exhibition, so anything is possible.

More of her info:

..> ..>

Status:	Single
Here for:	Networking
Orientation:	Straight
Hometown:	stormville
Body type:	7' 11" / Body builder
Ethnicity:	Black / African descent
Religion:	Agnostic
Zodiac Sign:	Aquarius
Children:	Proud parent
Education:	College graduate
Occupation:	ex lion tamer
Income:	$250,000 and Higher

...obviously mostly bullshit.....

..> ..>

St Francis College Brooklyn, NY Graduated: N/A Degree: In Progress Major: none of yr business!

2006 to Present

...hopefully meaning NOT younger than 18, but unfortunately probably younger than 21, unless, maybe like me, she has procrastinated in college, or maybe taking it a step further, procrastinating in ENROLLING in college, who knows?....

finally here is a picture---not the profile pic but my fav thus far:

Something classic/futuristic at the same time. Neato. (call Guinness, I now have proof I am the last living person outside the state of Idaho using that word)

So anyways, I of course respond to the Zelda remark immediately with the following message accompanying my industrial friend request:

..> ..>

Date:	Sep 27, 2007 12:09 PM
Subject:	Always on the lookout....
Body:	A line I use a lot with my friends is that I am always on the lookout for my Zelda Fitzgerald.... I thought that was cute on your profile..... Who knows, I might be your F.Scott! Michael Bernard

...well, I didn't get a typed response per se, but I recieved a friend request back from her, which meant she probably (like me on this profile) erased the request automatically and then, curiously, checked the profile to see what/who it really was. Usually these fake camera bitches get turned in as spam. I probably will someday also.

So last night I couldn't sleep, and what turns out to almost always be the wrong decision, I decide to turn the computer back on to see what's poppin, and seeing as how it is about 5 am at this time, nothing is poppin in this hemisphere although the parties are just winding down in Thailand which does me no good at all......So I compose the following, poorly concieved, executed, and most certainly, recieved email in the history of internet dating (stalking). (note the reference to how she is running out of ethnic friends under the "who I'd like to meet" thing...)

..> ..>

Date:	Sep 28, 2007 6:49 AM
Subject:	<---sorta ethnic
Body:	I'm sorta ethnic.....Half Argentine, half Irish......My biological mom and sister actually live in W-- NY, and as far as I know, my mom works somewhere in the city. Also I have been told I have brainpower but I don't believe it. I don't have to appear clingy, I actually AM if I'm not careful.... I like to attempt to keep warm and keep my home at -65 degrees. It's a hobby I enjoy. I have a wool sweater that doesn't zip up but is apparently very anti-stylish that I wear constantly. Also a green longjohn shirt I paid way too much for at an American Eagle one time...... I had a friend once tell me things you find, win or steal are way more valuable than anything you buy. I think he was right.....Almost everything I treasure (which isn't too much I'm not into "things" very much) has a really good story behind it..... I read and type at the same time all the time.....I've got to multitask to get everything done I need to in the procrastination-protracted timeframe necessary for basic life incohesion..... I'm not sure if your statement about "My Super-Sweet 16" is sarcastic or not. Usually I say stuff like that with a great deal of sarcasm and latent frustration. I'm an outrage poet. I gotta have something to be outraged about, besides everything else screwed up in the world.....disillusionment poetry also is mixed in there somewhere.... I hate being mean and do almost everything possible to avoid hurting people's feelings (except outrage poetry, as it turns out....). Sorry if I'm bothering the crap out of you---I'll stop but if you would like to continue this 'through-the-void" random conversation feel free. Also, my personal profile is the first of my top friends on this profile, and that contains my most recent blogs and a little more about me....this profile is really 99% professional....I can't remember if/when I have ever conversated as such with a (hopefully future) reader so forgive my unprofessionalism. It's like 5:35am here and I haven't slept in two days out of stress and tonight out of relief. Long story that either paints me in a really cool, outlaw light or marks me as a dangerous counterculturalist. Or both. I like conflicting truths. The Zelda thing got my attention, though....Here, at the Montgomery Museum of Art, there are two paintings by Zelda Fitzgerald that I always stop in and see when I go to the big city. When I was a kid, growing up in MN, I thought I might be the reincarnated F.Scott Fitzgerald. Now I'm pretty sure I'm not although much of my life trajectory has followed suit......Or maybe I am, I don't know...... I'm off-kilter and I'm known for these kind of emails with my friends, not usually with strangers but who knows??? How many Jack Kerouac's are writing you completely random emails this early today morning??? I've got to sleep eventually but I'm either not as crazy as you think or twice as awesome as you suspect. Or both. I'm also old as hell (27) which is a third of your myspace age (90) and maybe almost a half decade higher than your actual age. I'm not sure but anyways....sleep beckons, taunts me from the edge of daylight saying "your hopes of sleeping when it is dark and being productive in the sunlight will have to wait at least one more day". I've heard that one before... Take care and if you like keep in touch! Michael Bernard

.....bad, bad, bad. Like when you wake up the next day and can barely remember the night before, but can remember enough to know you've got a lot of apologies, explanations, and/or people to avoid for a while. Combine that with attempts to pick up random strange girls in different states via Myspace, completely unsolicited other than finding them in the friend list of an artist you closely align with artistically or a political viewpoint you agree with, and that is kinda what I feel like.

Except I spent most of today thinking---"Hey, that might have worked---she might have got that message, and after having seen all my other drastic coolness (via my professional profile), fell madly in love".....I am a hopeless romantic, optimist, and idiot, as it turns out.

So I predictably spend my waking time before work checking my inbox (in both profiles) and my outbox to see if the message had been read yet, almost every five minutes religiously until I absolutely have to leave for work or risk being later than I'm going to be anyways. I get home at nearly midnight and the message had been read, and no response as of this being about twenty four hours since sending the message. And I am left wondering at what point you cross the line into internet stalking. I am trying to ween myself slowly, like only checking my inbox every 10 minutes for a while. Sleeping. Writing this action report was a way to trick myself into doing something else for a few also.

On a side note the female friend I made recently that I hung out with once and then missed her coming to visit because I didn't know she was coming and went with Chico that afternoon for some errands has not really been in touch with me recently. But as with almost any female I find myself dating or wanting to date, the complications and intricacies of the situation make both likelihoods (that it is just everything else in life distracting her and not me) [or] (that it is me, that I am a weirdo barely able to function in normal society and definitely not a candidate for whatever it is you get when you find someone like you but the other sex) equally possible.

It might be natural at this point to say "Maybe I should tailor the way I do things to be a little less over the top". You know, like not ambush a girl right out of the gate like that. Like maybe introduce her to my insanity and constantly shifting madness at a slow pace. Like maybe even pretend to be normal until at least the Antogonist Movement Event and then maybe reveal it after if it turns out she likes me enough to not just run away. But, like Dostoyevsky, I say, "have I not done her a better service, and myself also, perhaps saving years of misery for us both?". Or like Sexy Rexy Grossman, I say, "Fuck it, I'm throwing it downfield!".

Because, if anything, if I've learned anything from the millions of platitudes your friends tell you when you end up back on the open market, "just be yourself" being the king of all these platitudes (and how I hate platitudes!), it's that if I am as I am (nuts), then I need to embrace it. I need to be just as confident as Sexy Rexy and know that when I fling this insanity out into the wind as I do, that the ball will at the very least look beautiful as it spirals and arcs so gracefully, no matter who catches it. (The defenders wouldn't get so many interceptions if the balls weren't so perfectly thrown in the first place, such tight spirals...). Every pass play should be a touchdown or a pick-6. This isn't golf. Life is fucking football. I don't have time, patience, or willpower left to do the whole sociopathic "mold yourself into someone who might be worthy of companionship" method I so embraced and ran into the ground for the last 27 years. What was I thinking? I mean, just because I'm all screwed up doesn't mean I can't find someone who is attracted to it. Truely, living your life as a series of compromises made to build yourself into a respectable human being, contributing member of society, and law abiding citizen is for jerks. The kid gloves are off, like my current anti-hero, I'm laying it all out there every play. The endzone isn't in the flats, the endzone is at the end of the field, and all those short passes are for pansies. I go for touchdowns.

Construda

Construda

My hobby of collecting obscure music in droves took a new twenty-first century leap thanks to my friend Daniel, who has worked with me the last two days teaching this non-technology inclined moron how to download entire discographies at one time. Dinky's computer just informed me that I have just now finished downloading all 23 Halo's of the Nine Inch Nails discography. In just a short amount of time I will be able to recover most all of the music I remember I have ever owned, and not only this, but quickly accumulate all the new stuff I get addicted to every other time I turn around.

I had spoke with Daniel a few weeks back regarding plans for creative endeavors, and as it turns out, his musical interests and my own are very similar. Not only this but I am slowly learning the language of this musical taste I have had for so long but was unable to define. Apparently it has roots in "Acid Jazz", "Trance Techno", and "World Music". I had clues that was the track I was on for a while, but never knew for sure what someone (such as Daniel) that really knew about this stuff would call it. Now the present goal is to find a drummer and a singer for this project of Daniel's so he can go forth. I am very excited about the possibilities here!

In our most recent discussions Daniel exposed me to some of his musical influences, and I have to say, they are terrific. Shpongle and Hallucineogen are apparently trance groups fronted by the same guy and that specialize in different aspects of trance music. Supposedly trance is going out of style in favor of "House", and still I don't understand the distinctions of the different genres of techno (in my head techno has always had to fight for it's area of legitimacy to start with, much less deserving of other subgenres---like present day "Metal"---even though I have been a fan of Lords of Acid and God Lives Underwater for a decade or more, and whole-heartedly believe the "Deconstructed" album by Bush to be the most underrated album of all time). I don't care about the subgenre's. I know what I like when I hear it. That goes for all types of music. Mediski Martin and Wood is an "Acid Jazz" band that I have downloaded extensively in the last couple of days, and I look forward to chilling out to the double-set live concert I downloaded where they cover Jimi Hendrix songs entirely. This will be a treat! I also stumbled across a song by Fedde Le Grand called "Put You Hands up For Detroit", and the Shprongle song I'm listening to right now just seemed to bust into the same bass/drum groove (heavily chopped and altered) in the song that is playing now on my turntables ("A New Way To Say Horray"). Awesome since I was going to next talk about this song anyways. Oh, and I also downloaded the entire discography of Nirvana and Beastie Boys in the last twenty-four hours. I'll be occupied for months now.....

A moment I have wished for for at least a week happened today when a couple friend-girls challenged me to whip it out in front of them so that they could rank me amongst whatever it is girls judge them against. I mean I know what they are judging it against but it's like a test you take on friday and find out if you passed on Monday. This is a test as far as I know I have never really failed, but a passing grade in this case is not binding obviously since neither female is really available as far as I know, or in my league necessarily.....The reason I had been wishing for this moment (more than the usual tendency for a red blooded american male to desire to whip it out often) in particular because of a snippet of conversation I heard about a week ago where some girls were talking and comparing the size of various guys they knew. I wanted to be included in the National Title Conversation. I think I got the goods to go the distance, or at least, to deserve to be in the hunt.......The problem for me was that I was so ready to ablige I didn't have a second to stall and work up a semi or anything so it was basically in it's "sleeping" form (although not George Constanza "post-pool" crippled). Oh well now that I don't have that going through my head anymore I may proceed to newer, higher level obsessions, such as the meaning of life, love, and everything else...........

[......or as I just discovered in the restroom, probably haunted by the feeling every time I see it for the next week I'm going to think "why couldn't you have been that big at that crucial moment last saturday"....]...

A word that fellow half-ass Minnesotean Laurence "Kool Aide" Maroney (inadvertantly I believe) and I are trying to MeMe into the cultural conciousness right now is "Construda", which is basically a modern adaption of the late-90's word "Quan".

Do you remember the movie "Jerry McGuire"? For years I had been perplexed by the very obvious guy anti-bias to this movie and the almost universal female adoration of it. It was not until tonight while pontificating that it became clear to me----Jerry McGuire is a chick-flick disquised as a sport's movie. How obvious! How did I not see it before? Probably because I am a hard-core american male who is secure with his sexuality and who supremely loves the odd and rare chick flick (don't get me started on "While You Were Sleeping"). Sometimes I will take my chick flicks heavily disguised ("Meet Joe Black") or super violent ("The Long Kiss Goodnight".........."What?!?", you may ask, "didn't The Long Kiss Goodnight feature more Samuel L Jackson bleeding than almost any other Samuel L Jackson movie ever made, which is a highly impressive and bloody feat for ANY movie to aspire to?"...........the undeniable truth here is any movie that has a female as the main protagonist is automatically a chick flick.....I'm a sexist, so what?.......Even that movie where Demi Moore shaves her head to become a Marine [and technically any movie where a woman shaves her head]is very clearly lesbian soft-porn......the closest a female protagonist has ever come to not being the star of a chick flick was Meg Ryan in "Courage Under Fire" and maybe "Domino" since I haven't seen it yet.....). Even comic book movies about girls being badasses are really chick flicks (even my almost favorite movie in the world, "Tank Girl"). So what? Are you secure in your manlihood? Does it frighten you that "Resident Evil" is a chick flick? I don't care, you don't need to watch that stupid bullshit anyways.

But see because I had never gone through the process of realizing this Truth, it had never occured to me why my metaphores relating to "Jerry McGuire", especially to other guys, were falling flat. So let me start with "Quan", then I will do my best to describe what Kool Aide Maroney ("bout time we got some construda in dis mothafucka") has been too unintelligible to describe clearly for the American Public.

Quan is the idea that success is a combination of many different elements of your life that need to be in harmony to make the greater whole worthwhile. One of the plot angles of Jerry McGuire was that we need to align our personal character strengths and flaws to better atune ourselves to the harmony of the Quan we might already have, or to better achieve the Quan we want.

Construda is the word we are going to use for this for now on. The reasons are simple. One, no red-blooded american male (namely me) can relate lessons and insights from the movie Jerry McGuire (even if we are both closeted fans of the movie, Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding Jr, or even god-forbid Renee Zellweger) to one another without crossing what is a very well-defined guy boundry.

Sure, we might have watched the movie "Fried Green Tomatoes" with our mom and loved it, but we can't say that to another guy without possibly invoking the Mercy Killing Rule. It's like "Dacing with the Stars", or anything on MTV in the last most of the decade. I mean, I can and sometimes apparently do (like right now), because while I am aware of this boundry, I was not informed on how far the vast woman-wing conspiracy was willing to go to take this shit over. This is why I am just getting used to (and excited about) the fact our next president is Hillary. I hope she is. Do you remember growing up in the Clinton Utopia? I do, and I want it back. All my reservations of being under the power of a woman be damned.

So I've been thinking about my Construda. What I've got; not a whole lot of possessions and absolutely the opposite of any sort of status symbol at all at this point (despite there being credible eye-witness testimony available that I used to have such things in abundance), but a whole shitload of really cool ass friends, a life-time of awesome experiences from which to draw wisdom (even more important wisdom than figuring out how the mass media is slowly castrating us with a rigamarole of feminist and homosexual brainwashing), street cred (big time), a car (sometimes), money (less and less frequently), the possibility (although abstract at this point) of one day being in love or having sex and maybe even both together at the same time or in that order even is cool with me, being on my way to achieving lifegoals that are almost as old as me......What more could someone want? I mean, other than a blue-water sailboat, a porsche (again), a badass condo or impressive place to live (again), a bigscreen tv bigger than rhode island (again), money in the bank (a distant memory, but again), and impressive wardrobe of clothes and in fact the daily dressing ritual of Peter Dragon (was up to watches last time)............and then look at it----do you see it??, is it coming through to you now?----The posessions we desire due to social, marketing, or experience conditioning, even in their absense the desire and idea of ownership and possession causes us to be owned BY THEM, not to mention the responsibility and anxiety (and possibily the deflating dissatisfaction) of the reality of actually having such things to maintain and protect..................how many times have you gotten exactly what you wanted just to be let down?.......................so I think instead about the stuff that would REALLY make me any happier than I am now, not inconsequential material goals that either vicariously replace the spiritual completeness of a fulfilled life or distract us from our God-guided quest for upper level self-actualization.....so I think tonight about things I would REALLY like for myself...... a hot girl to lay in bed with at night, Brain Greise getting his ass lit up tomorrow and Rex Grossman coming in to beautifully blow the game for the Bears, the Vikings maybe winning, having even just a hottie being interested in me more than any other guy in particular and vice versa, maybe even miraculously the Falcons winning, seeing the Pacific Ocean one day, being full-size or real close when I whip it out for a girl for the first time next time, going significantly west of the Mississippi River, seeing long-seperated family and friends again, travelling the world and being a semi-piss-poor represenative of straight-edge American culture but a very very awesome example of underground counterculturalism and being a seeker of the Divine Moments of Truth. My Construda will never have to be checked at the Airport Baggage Claim. Hurricanes won't destroy it (although could threaten the immediate comfort of that night in bed with Mrs. Future). It cannot be stolen or taxed. It is a currency that is unique to us all individually, while we share in it with all of each other forever. My wealth is in my relations with other people and the experiences we have shared, and will share together in the future.