god bless julian, nick, fab, nikolai and albert

where would i be without the strokes?

35% less happy.

i rated qualified. i'd figure the fuck out of twin falls.

alone we stand, together we fall apart

the end of the world

This morning I was walking to the bus and the above the fold Chronicle headline said the state of California might be in for the worst drought in the history of the state. Not good times and the GDP shrunk nearly 4% and something like 100,000 people lost their jobs this week and I lost a button on some slacks. Down. Down. Down some more. It's almost like we're getting all this sun because the bad news would be too much to handle in the rain.

As of yet my company hasn't laid anyone off but sometimes I think it is only a matter of time. My individual position is contractually mandated so I feel secure but if the ax were to fall I'd just hit the road and rails and try to make my way across America. You'd see no pouting but might get postcards. I'd feel better if I had a rainy day fund but it already rained and the fund has been unfunded.

But the weekend isn't the time to worry, especially not this weekend. Sunday is the Super Bowl and the Cardinals are going to win. Just saying so don't be surprised but if I'm wrong take solace in knowing the economy remains strong enough for some companies to still spend 3 million dollars to advertise for 30 seconds.

Rockers say weeeellll, that's coooool.

waiting for word on the 7SL

Today has been a waiting day and Wednesday. I've been waiting for the Coachella line-up to be posted and am praying it isn't true that Paul McCartney is headlining Sunday. I hate Paul McCartney and already saw him play at Bridge School. Actually I saw him play two straight nights at Bridge and he played the same set each night. A sin, but not a deal breaker, except he also made the same jokes after the same songs. Night two mirrored night one completely and there is nothing Rock n Roll about that. Fucking ex Beatle. Reading the Coachella tea leaves is famously inexact, if it was up to rumor mongers and dirty bloggers The Smiths would have reunited each of the past six years and Jack Johnson never would have choppered in to play. Ever. Last year...I remember Trudy from Reno 911 being pretty into Jack Johnson and I'd probably have sex with her so Jack Johnson is ok in my book. So yeah! Coachella! Figure it out! And Muse would be terrific.

And yet and also, I wait for the 7SL.

fyi

the song mentioned below. i don't know how to embed just a song so this is the best i could do

233 words to lay waste

Today it feels like I got slammed in the chest with a fucking sledge hammer. Last week I wrote about things starting to happen and I said I hoped when they happened that I'd be on a winning streak. Well. They happened, I'm not.

Anything more I write will say more then I want to say.

This next part...it's what I do best, I'll hurt and then I'll close up, more. Always more. Life is a god damned gauntlet and letting up, letting your guard down, embracing love, hoping for change, praying for peace, whispering in the dark, taking that chance, accepting vulnerability...it all just makes the gauntlet longer and it makes it harder to get through.

At the end of The Wrestler there is a Springsteen song and it goes like this, the first three lines of the chorus:

Then you've seen me, I come and stand at every door
Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before
Then you've seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor

I'm on the outside. You're inside of me. I look and look but get further and further away. Don't make me into a fool, don't make a fucker out of me, I can still make you smile when my blood hits the floor.

I did not see this coming.

losing streak

The other night I was talking with someone like people sometimes do. Talking is human. Like kissing and holding hands in the dark. While we were talking I had to explain that in life I'm kind of the streaky type. And kind of is a kind phrase, I'm as streaky as a window wiped clean with a paper towel wrapped in a stick of butter. This is not always a good thing. If we go to Tahoe together and shoot craps I'll lose a grand before my first free casino drink arrives. Everyone will feel bad for me because it'll be so early in the trip and I'd be so quickly laid to rest. Destroyed, sliced to ribbons, out of blood, out of money. And then, a few hours later, I'll wait until just past midnight when the bank will give me some money from the ATM again and I'll start to play again. It might be blackjack but is most often craps. My luck will start to change and by the time you look over I'll have hit four points and the hard ways will be banging my way and suddenly I'm back even and then maybe up for the night, for the trip. Either way my heart races, losing big and winning big. How I go home at the end only depends on when we finally go home.

Gambling is always the most apt metaphor but these streaks, they are everywhere. Darts, soccer, finding parking spots, life. I've yet to pin down any verifiable clues or phenomena that could give me a firm sense of when my luck is going to change and whether or not it'll be better or worse. With that said, I got a hunch that some things are changing. The status quo, my status quo, has remained pretty consistent the last 18 months. Same job, same place to lay my head at night; issues with friends and family are ever present, I have a struggling family and occasionally dramatic friends. Nothing new there. But still, something new is coming. I'm not feeling the words strong enough to avoid the obvious cliche....but a storm is coming. Change is coming. I'm just going to hope I get on a winning streak because I might not have the time to wait out losing.

Good luck Rockers.

And....raise a toast this weekend to Jeff Kent....he was an absolute monster of a baseball player with the Giants and without him and his clutch hitting the Giants never would have made the 2002 playoffs let alone win the NL pennant. Kent was a complete red ass most of the time but all he ever did was play hard and respect the game. Short of his famous lie about breaking his wrist while washing his truck, Kent never was in trouble off the field. In a few years he'll be entering the Hall of Fame as a Giant and eventually his 21 will be retired. He earned both honors.

Thanks Jeffro. (his nickname in my old columns for the TSC)

bam! bongo?

Lots going on this week. Indecision. So far anyway. But plenty might get decided tomorrow. Friday! Bam!

I had lunch in a brothel today but all I got was chicken with pasta and not a blow job or a beer. Considering the cut of the wait staff I was probably lucky to escape with just my lunch.

And at last the rain has returned, it feels like January. Santa had brought me a new coat, after years of waiting I was finally a good enough boy...and then I got all kinds of sun and I thought I'd never be able to wear it out of my house. Like Santa was going to bring me the gift and then take away all conditions necessary to enjoy the gift. But he was pretty cool in the end and I got a new coat.

All we've got is sadness and time. I won't forget.

inaugural bliss

Earlier today we got a new President. Likable guy. Apparently he has a decent jump shot. His wife wore a designer outfit, said designer shot to the top of the google hot trends index. Lots of money is being made today. Well. Except for the market. It lost pretty damn all around badly. There is so much more new hope in the atmosphere. It can't be adequately measured by anyone without an MIT degree and a whole army of minions holding protractors. John Roberts and the President apparently didn't rehearse the actual swearing in ceremony. Conspiracy theories already exist to explain the discrepancy. George Bush got into a helicopter and again entered private life. God bless him. And while were at it, God bless America. The peaceful transfer of power from one party to another is the surest signs of our unique and stable democracy. I'm distinctly underwhelmed today but also happy that the long election season is over and that something has changed, whatever it may turn out to be.

and on and on and on and on and a little more

remind me how this ends. someone. 

it's just me and i'm not enough to feed the gristmill (grinding my bones)

he said that if two ambien weren't enough to put him to sleep that'd he take the whole goddamn bottle and see if that was enough. so i understood. 

i was already well asleep when the call came. i'm always first woken by my phone vibrating against the hard wood. i jump before the ring. jump, check the call and see i got fucking problems. when the conversation was done i needed the ambien and i needed the whisky. my drug of choice, not his. i settled for one without the other but didn't sleep well the rest of the night. 

if i add it all up, tally my burdens, let loose the dreams i still dream...i get dizzy. i feel crushed. a friend of mine, someone who has barely scratched the surface of my dizzying life told me she was excited to see me smile because i hardly ever smile. this was maybe the keenest observation anyone has ever made about me, quick, to the point, true. 

and another friend sent me an email saying i was everything wrong in the world. that might be the truth. i hold out hope for her redemption more then i hold out for my own. 

when i was 18 i got a job fighting fires all through the west. we'd be driving along in our truck and were always just three beeps from turning the sirens on and moving on to a fire. at night i carried a radio pager and hoped it'd beep. i never had a worry in the world other then being ready for that next fire. sometimes we'd work straight through the night and long past the morning sunrise. on a shift like that i'd always futilely fight against losing my mind. after enough time sucking in smoke and hiking up hills i'd stop thinking about anything but what was directly in front of me. i used to not like being that disconnected from the world, it felt cheap and lazy, but now i know better and wish that i'd again have those early morning hours with the embers and without all this other shit bouncing around in my head. 

nothing works here. there is no way out. i know i'll count the casualties one of these days. 

start something new

I got a new project. A good one, albeit personal and thus impossible to disclose on this blog. My project, remember...it's a good one, has given me a lengthy to do list. The kind I rarely see. This afternoon I managed to whittle the list down just a bit but it remains long. I might have gotten more of it done if I haven't been sort of sick all week. Growing up I always caught a cold when the season changed. Winter to spring...count on a cold. See, it's only goddamn January. There is more cold to come so this year I probably get my own personal cold twice. Unless I can manage to move to an already warm climate, maybe Mexico or somewhere else where everyone speaks Spanish and the sun always burns hot and bright. If I make it there I'll post my tacomail address so everyone can keep in touch.

I'm short a dose of dayquil and need to get home to switch to theraflu and brandy. The weekend is pretty empty except for me being excited to watch the conference title games on Sunday. I'm figuring the Cardinals and Ravens are going to advance. My picks go against the grain but Ray Lewis killed two people and Kurt Warner might be Jesus. It would be fitting if they played against each other in the Super Bowl.

Feel better Rockers. (or me)

*

old friendships fade away

god bless the 714

haaaa

bruce:

ricky, if we skid off the road and go tumbling down a thousand feet to our death...you better not ruin my last moments by screaming like a pussy.

ricky:

i'd be pounding my beer.

i got a memory

or maybe you'd call it an idea. about a time when i was in the best touch with myself and out of touch with everyone else. gchat is insidious and awesome. but i might be happier away and under the stars. thinking, writing and dreaming. working hard. my back always hurts now, from my chair at work and all the computer work i do. it hurts worse then whenever i fought fires or fueled planes. there is so much i learn all day from my reader and blogs and who the fuck knows what all else but i'm more and more anxious all the time. decisions are getting harder and harder to make and it feels like there are more of them every day.

from a gchat:

Sure, it seems like you’re physically safer running a keyboard than a crab boat or an oil rig. But if you follow the research on how white-collar job stress damages physical and mental health, you might not feel so secure.

There’s evidence that people who engage in physical toil, while perhaps in greater immediate danger, are safer from the long-term impact of mental stress. For one, they work off some of their tensions through manual labor (exercise alleviates stress), and when they leave the job, they’re more likely to actually leave it, mentally as well as physically.

In contrast, many office types accumulate stress in their bodies, don’t have the physiological expenditures that help dissipate it, and often take their work and worries home. Studies show that a single stressful event floods the body with stress hormones that take about an hour to dissipate.

Yikes.

i went left and lost

Words are cheap when I'm half drunk and half awake.

Sometimes I'm not sleeping in the dark and fighting the blanket on my naked chest. Times. Time.

I wish I could write in the dark.

for post #700

I recall in vivid detail taking a class taught by Leon Panetta. I got an A.

Now he is the head of the CIA.

It's a bigger A.

And I lament the society I call home where torching businesses and throwing rocks is the most effective way to protest "potential" police brutality and honor the dead.

My take: it was a terrible accident. A massive accidental mistake was made. Nothing more...a phrase that suggests a certain glib attitude, but even a minor mistake can have major consequences and this major mistake had the most severe. But an accident all the same. I can't believe that the officer was such a cold hearted motherfucker as to deliberately execute a man in cold blood in front of 100 people. Any man like that would have given his statement and been proud for what he did. A man that fucked up and killed someone, accidentally, remains hidden from view, both in shame and revulsion at the turn of fate that will haunt him the rest of his life.

telegraph

it's the ping ping ping like a telegraph. morse code on the edges of my mind. fraying the borders and diluting meaning. think less. less. ping ping ping.

melancholy and memories fade

My weekend was uneventful. The best joke was about vicodin and viagra. The girl that drafted me rescinded my rights after I refused a personal physical. I might get picked up as a rule 5 but until that point I'm a free agent.

I woke up pretty early Saturday morning and walked several miles up towards Dodge Ridge on the side of the road. There wasn't anywhere for me to go or anything for me to do. I had left my wallet, phone and keys at the cabin and in my jeans and short sleeve shirt probably looked strange to the early bird skiers and snowboarders driving up to the hill. Maybe like a man that had been walking all through the night but had nowhere to stop, no place to call home.

My facebook account detailed all of the NYE festivities from last week except for what my friends and I directly participated in. Photos were taken and shared privately. God bless em for that. Everyone else looked good in their pictures. For some people that I can't be friends with anymore the only way I'll ever see them again will be through someone else's camera lens. It isn't what I wanted but it is what I got.

2009 is going to be a fucking bloodbath. No rest and no backing down. Ten weekends are already claimed and there is a storm on the horizon. In moments of rest I already feel weary.

and now...

we travel to whore island.

where proof of a negative HIV test is mandatory for admittance.

where christianity never took hold.

and how! and how! i don't wanna.