is reconsidering the lyrics

Turn the lights out to the fucking end is going dark for a few days.

Listen to this song and tell me if you think he pushed the button...because I'm wondering the same thing about my life.

The Temptation of Adam - Josh ...

well. how as fuck.

it was the night with the medicinal marijuana and the bed jumping and a busted bleeding lip. i saw your facebook and this was as same as a status but we jumped and bled and fell in love and set off the fire alarm and then knocked it from the ceiling onto the floor and kissed to the end of the world again because the bed bounced and fuck it, cut em up.

falling in and out of love

The Drugs Don't Work - The Ver...

This has been an exceedingly confusing weekend. Where did anyone sleep last night? We are all killing ourselves for cheap. Faith and patience misled me once and I'm going on faith and patience again. I am trying not to remember anything worth remembering. I am trying to break my heart. Tiny little glimmers of light burst through the inky night and find reflective beauty in the places lost the most. I will not breathe, I will not die.

i'm at the edge of the world without a beat left in my heart.

as a liability i'd sure like to waste away because no matter how hard i try what makes me happiest slips just past my reach. 

i'm going to close my eyes for a while and let the evening shadows play and pray for this to hurry and be another day.

fuck me up. 

the longest and saddest day

once more rockers, god bless the opd.

a startling revelation

Last night, late, while my roommates played grabass in the next room I was thinking about sheaffer in Boston and how her and I used to always laugh about that true axiom concerning men and how they treat women:

Treat them like dirt and they stick like mud.

It's so true. Always true. But last night I thought about something I'd never previously considered. If someone treats me like dirt do I stick like mud?

Suddenly I was all the way awake and pacing my room! Nothing could spell my restless mind. So I went through all the relationships I've been in and was dismayed to learn that when I am treated like dirt I have sometimes stuck like mud. Mud! The very worst of the dirt family!

To say I was terribly vexed would be an understatement.

But it's true. Sadly true. I'm good at pleasing. I like to please. I'm good at working and helping out. Decent things, all of them, but I've gotten myself involved sometimes with people that took me for granted and I would over compensate to try and win more of their affection even as I liked them less and less. Sometimes this happened in short dating type relationships and other times in longer fully defined relationships. As might be expected I sometimes get great at making excuses for people who got great at letting me stick around and who didn't give anything in return. These girls (and now I have a list) treated me like dirt and then eventually washed me away like mud. Mud!

I'm not sure what this means because people have tried assuring me that being nice and sweet is the right thing, however, I have significant evidence that being a dick to girls can make it so they stick around and generally will do whatever necessary to make me happy. Perhaps I'm not bright enough to find the proper balance. Maybe it's only existed a few times in my life. The back and forth, mutual respect, understanding. Yeah yeah yeah. I'm single now and don't know the proper approach. Nice. Mean. Good. Bad. Treat girls poorly? Treat them well and hope they treat me well in return? Don't be a nice guy, don't finish last. Be a nice guy, be sweet, kind and charming. Finish better then where you start. Lie and cheat. Manipulate. All relationships are defined and redefined as power struggles.

It'd be easier to figure this out if my past wasn't so full of girls that I met and then helped along and loved while they healed or applied to grad school or got a divorce. Romantically and otherwise I've so frequently been the springboard. The man that stands in the middle of a broken life and helps put all the pieces back together. I sometimes feel like I could field a soccer team full of people I helped along to great things and as much as that sounds arrogant I've got the letters and emails piled up saying as much and all those people are somewhere else and I never was the one that met them after they had already met me. And yet I'm still here, still hopeful, still wondering and I still want to meet someone and count the million beautiful ways they can be irreplaceable. Even if it means I'm just a springboard. Or mud.

March 24th, 1980

Today is the 29th anniversary of the martyring of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador and the protector of the poor within Latin America.

The most important weeks of my life were in El Salvador and El Salvador is the beating heart of Oscar Romero. His life and legacy still echo in the dreams of the poor. Few hours of my life have meant more to me then when I was blessed to view his shrine and spend a moment with my hand on the cool white marble of his crypt.

Six years ago this morning I woke up before the sun and met two of my best friends to walk over to a community center in Guarjila, the small town we were staying in over our spring break. We met Santos, the leader of the Tamarindos, the youth group sponsoring our trip and we helped him mount loud speakers on the town truck. For the next hour, as the sun rose over Guarjila and pushed back the darkest part of the night, we drove in silence and listened to the Romero sermons playing via cassette tape through the speakers on the truck. That morning Oscar Romero again woke the village with his message and briefly all was right in the world.

They killed him. He rose in the heart's the Salvadoran people. He rose in my heart.

further from the sun then ever before

It's not news anymore. Four policemen were murdered Saturday afternoon in East Oakland. I was at a bar in the Sunset drinking away the afternoon and proud of my picks when the news scrolled across the top of a TV showing the GU-WKU game. And as moments go it wasn't much, just a repeated screen scroll, the same text and speed used to advise viewers of a rain delay. Part of me needs to believe that good things are still possible in this world. Part of me needs to know that love exists and that there is a place and purpose for everyone. I'm not naive to the cruelties of the world. I've seen my share of violence. I know people that have killed others and I know people who have lost loved ones to murder. Violence isn't designed to make sense. Violence is inhuman and counter to every correct societal impulse yet violence remains a constant, both in Oakland and around the world. So it'll never stop. Killing and hurting will never stop. Is life without meaning if it can be taken so quickly? The capricious nature of life and death has left me again questioning my faith in the most fundamental of manners. I've done my best to live a good life, I've tried to be fair and kind to my friends and to engage the world with love in my heart. Admittedly I've accomplished less then I would have hoped and yet I keep waking up and at the same time others who have done more and who mean more will lose their lives. It all feels wrong and without meaning. What is life without meaning? God bless the OPD officers who lost their lives serving their community. Perhaps in some small way each of them will push the rest of us towards greater service and a better world. I have my doubts.

something here feels really wrong

and I don't know what it is but what it might be is something no one would like to hear.

RIP OPD FOUR. More Later. Get me the fuck out of this month.

like a dancing bear

Today, for two reasons, I've had to burn a CD and a DVD. I can't figure it out. My mind, capable of many things, including starting out 21 for 24 in my biggest NCAA pool can't comprehend itunes. ITUNES!

We lost last night, 5-2, and I was sad because we probably had the talent on the field to beat the team across from us but soccer takes more then talent and we played like what we were, a group of people who barely know each other.

Until yesterday I thought I was going to LA tomorrow to watch a WBC semifinal. Then it turned out to be Venezuela and Korea and my interest waned. Now it's again about college basketball and maybe 24 hours of rain in the middle of the weekend. And Peets. And NBA Jam. And Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball. And dreaming about taking a proper vacation. And how!

Bye Rockers.

dying with the sparks

I got dropped off at home this morning and decided to lay down for a minute before getting back up but then I slept another hour and woke up just in time to almost call in with a phantom sickness for the opening thursday of the NCAA tourney. As a working professional that has recently been furloughed I decided to come into work and set up the 19 inch tv in my office to face my desk just to the right of my computer screen. The normal assortment of well wishers and applicants have been mighty impressed with my guile. I'm riding high on the hog like Wimpy finding a mighty large pile of hamburgers all unwrapped and ready to eat. It's early yet, too early to tell but I've started 6 out of 7 and am feeling good about all of my picks through tonight. This is in stark contrast to the opening day of the 2002 NCAA tournament where I lost three sweet sixteen teams and an elite eight before the sun had even set over Swig. We called that day 'Bloody Thursday.' There is still plenty of time today for blood but I'm hoping it comes from my visit to the dentist and not from a string of big upsets tonight.

Oh. Yes. Soccer also. Gol. Gol. Gol.

to be wanted by you

Here's the trick to drinking beers in a sauna set to cook at 180 degrees. When you get out you have to drink water to replenish everything left behind. My cells needed hydration this morning like I couldn't imagine possible. It's a good thing that sauna isn't right down the hall or I'd be at risk all the time.

Tonight is the last night before the madness sets in and boy christ howdy am I ever damn fucking ready. Last night I was thinking how St. Patrick's day might be getting old for me and that might be true but it's also true that I get more and more excited every year for the NCAA's and the start of baseball season. This year I'm riding Memphis like a fat man always rides the elevator. No surprise there. I love athletic rangy teams with good guards and numerous potential head cases.

It's been forever since I've clicked on my stat counter so I'm assuming I still have 15 or so daily readers and another 50 or so people that click my way on occasion. This clearly isn't the site to promote anything so this isn't so much a promotion as it is a collective cross your fingers. One of my favorite people is helping promote a party going off tomorrow at SXSW and she's worked her ass off. Even though I won't be there I want it to go well and if you're reading this cross your fingers or jump over a broomstick or knock on wood or do whatever you do when you want a little luck and fortune and send the vibes towards Austin and The Bay Area Takeover.

The Story Of - Heavenly States

from a house on my street

from where ray price lives.

(i like this song better on scratchy vinyl and i talked to my dad on the phone today and he had it in the background at 2 in the afternoon and i know he had a beer in his hand so this might be everything anyone could ever need to know about my unique emotional state. and now it's stuck in my head, your head)

For The Good Times (Album Vers...

it's heavy right now but you got the levity and i've got the time

Firstly I'm exhausted. I'm in the middle of a period of relative sleeplessness. Secondly my body aches because when I slept last night I slept all twisted around. All night the man with the spinner called out where my hands and feet were supposed to go and I played twister and I didn't win. My lower back, right shoulder and hips all hurt.

So now I'm going to go to the block party downtown and I'm going to drink a few beers for the holiday. I've been to the block party before when St. Patrick's day has fallen on a weekday, most recently in 2007 when all sorts of crazy things happened and I beat my friend in a water drinking race at a gay bar where we first kissed. Not that friend but a friend.

Last year was the last year I celebrated St. Patrick's day at the Bitter End because this year I'll be at a different bar drinking the same beer but removed from that other life. From my former life. The beer stays the same though and so does the hope that spring is near, the NCAA's are going to start, Coachella is on the horizon and everything that needs to be worked out will be worked out. No promises for sleep tonight but I had lunch and have dinner plans so I'm well fed and am taking care.

echo alpha. yankee sierra mike lima.

That's what they said.

steel can bleed. i know it because it's true.

The sun is out and it's Friday afternoon. These are good things. I've taken a professional beating this week, lots of bad news and trying situations, but the worst of it seems to have passed by and there is good reason to think next week will be better then this week. It can't be much damn worse. So if you see me tell me it'll get better and that I'm doing everything I can to hold it all together. I'm trying.

Bye Rockers. Time to relax.

story of my life

I always show up. I always help. I find solutions. I listen. I remain loyal.

I'm taken for granted. Daily. Weekly. Yearly.

letting them go, the transitory nature of love in a heart like mine

It was at a U2 concert in San Jose on their Elevation Tour. I was on the floor at the tip of the heart and startling close to Bono and The Edge. Earlier in the show they had again dedicated In a Little While to Joey Ramone. By that time it wasn't yet clear that All That You Can't Leave Behind was to be their death album but it had been widely reported that Ramone had listened to IALW just before his death. The band played One and then a stripped down cover of an obscure Ramones song called I Remember You. It lasted all of three minutes and was mostly an excuse for Bono to stretch his pipes beyond their assumed breaking point and yet that song in that place stuck with me forever. At the time I was in a poisonous romantic relationship that I had assumed was supposed to last until death. It wasn't until ***** and I split up that I fully realized the damage I had caused to my life and friends but that was a story six months in the future. That night I was with that woman and I heard Bono sing the only verse of a long forgotten Ramones song and something in my clicked.

I remember lying awake at night and thinking just of you
But things don't last forever and somehow baby
They never really do, They never really do

I remember you, I remember you, I remember you.

It was then and still is a silly little song with lyrics befitting the three chords essential to the Ramones but that night it sounded like an aria. I was being told that no matter what I was doing that night and who I was going home with that nothing of it would last forever. That was the moment I realized I more free then I had previously thought possible. Love is not a weapon or a constraining device. Love should make you happy. Love is supposed to last as long as it doesn't constrain, isn't a weapon and makes you happy. Otherwise, I remember you.

man you got the seperation anxiety. no, I got all the anxiety.

Pops is losing weight like can't be right. Moms is dying but stubborn about the process.

Jobs says I have take an unpaid day each month. Not take but work without pay. That's nearly two weeks unpaid a year. Or a pay cut. Actually a pay cut. The economy! The economy! And to think I never even benefited from the boom boom years because I spent most of them working for slave wages at a non profit.

Girls remain censured on this blog but suffice to say nothing is going quite the way I'd like.

My facility is a soft target and we were knocked off the other night, robbed of a few dollars, a cell phone and a radio and the fallout has been stressful. I've got the big office so everything stops with me, ready or not.

This morning I clicked my belt through the last notch so I better not get any thinner. Belts are expensive and are the type of item I'd rather buy once a decade then twice in three years. Money is tight right now, everything feels tight. No levity before the spring but that's alright because I'm going to find a way to win. That's what life is about, finding a way to win, to be a winner and be a hero. So...in the midst of all this I feel motivated and here's hoping that I can again figure it out.

it's a hard way to live

Alone. Together.

Wow has today been crazy.

It's hard to get ahead when you always find a way to self sabotage.

Bitter lessons learned twice.

las vegas, heartbreak, scu basketball and being in the same very large room with one person you weren't looking for but would have loved to find

I survived another weekend in Las Vegas.

As fun as it was I'm not certain I'll ever be having that same kind of fun.

SCU got us to Sunday and then lost by 35.

It's still called gambling for a reason.

Mistakes were made but everyone lived.

thanks mike mike

again and again and again

well. bye.

I'm going home for a minute and won't be posting much of anything until next week. If everything goes according to plan SCU will win three games in three nights and the 714 will be reuniting for the opening round of the NCAA tournament. If not, well, it should be fun all the same. As always I'm looking aces and paint and to make a little money at the tables and in the pit. I'm leaving an insanely stressful two weeks behind and though I may return hungover I'll also return refreshed and finally with some time. The sum of my existence is a bit weird right now and without definition or barriers. There is nothing wrong with weird and even less with the space I need to open up all the doors I've long left closed. It's nearly spring and times are a changing.

Bye Rockers.

square root day

I'm not much into math unless I'm counting the notches on a girl's bedpost while she changes into something more comfortable. But still. Not so much. Square root day is kind of cool though because I'm thinking it can't happen all that often, maybe not again until 4-4-16. That is two world cup world cup's from now. Bam! Bam! The last long month is almost over and for that I'm grateful and also vexed. Terribly vexed. There's been so much going that I have three to do lists going at once and I'm writing in pencil on my calendar in my worst handwriting so the notes would be largely inadmissible in court. When I was a kid and used to ride the bus I'd take a transfer even if I wasn't going to transfer because it was stamped with the time and date that I boarded the bus. The idea was that I'd have documentation of where I was always going in case I was ever blamed for trouble I didn't make. But then all the trouble I got in during those years was of my own creation and also largely harmless in the grander scheme of things so sadly my transfers never helped. I've got one more get up and then a straight 8 before I fly home and get a day or two off before the weekend. If SCU can win the WCC's everything will have been worth it and I make a snow angel on the hard wood at the Orleans, screaming at the roof and so disorientated that no amount of documentation would be helpful other then an ekg measuring my beating heart. Well. alright.

we've all got something coming

My eye has been twitching all weekend. I'm stretched. Tired. A bit burned out. The doom and gloom and constantly disastrous economic news makes me worry for all the people close to me in precarious financial situations. It'd be so pleasant to turn my brain off for a few hours but there always seems to be something more to do, further tasks to accomplish and problems to be solved. I go home Wednesday after work so that's good. A different set of problems for sure but something new all the same. This whole great depression shit really is depressing and I'm finally starting to see why those American's who lived through the first great depression and world war II were an especially heroic and stoic group. I'm a baby, not used to hard work and without the necessary survival skills. There were no twitching eyes in any kind of bread line. Or maybe there was. I've yet to see a primary source suggesting eye twitch as an epidemic. I think my eye is twitching because I've got something coming my way. I can feel it and don't like what I feel but it's coming all the same and I'm in too deep to get out of the way.