Off dead center

I'm a point, a location in space-time, with about a 90 degree lateral view in one direction, which I'll call forward, and a  perpendicular view of about 30 degrees.

The point of me is frequently in motion, relative to a much larger thing called planet, and you can keep on scaling up until you reach the boundary of what is possible to perceive over the vastiest distances of space and time. Beyond that... I give it a big fat raspberry, because it'll never hear it anyway.

The me point, at its absolute highest resolution, is zero-dimensional. You'd  think that would mean nothing, at first. I mean... zero, right? Zero dimensional. No bigness, or wideness, or heaviness, or stinkiness, or anything. No information at all, except for location, what? And hey, give that zero dimensional point a few seconds within which to exist, and then fart forward a couple of meters, and BANG! Your zero dimensional point becomes a one dimensional line, expressed through the fourth dimension of time.

That's what I am. A zero dimensional point with this cone of perception extending forward and away from the point of me and into three dimensions, preceding me along a line through the fourth dimension of duration; and in the process, leaving behind just a complete mess of a one dimensional timeline.

I dunno how that thing is ever gonna get untangled and straightened out. I think, maybe...

Maybe, if somebody way back when would have had litten the far beginning of it, and if it would have had burned and sizzled and zipped forward like a fuse and all up that tangled timeline in a forward manner, that then maybe I will have had seen it coming some day. I'll'd have seen that sizzling spark, in reverse, blasting forward and into the future at tachyon speed, and maybe I'd have been able to be seeing it coming after me, barreling through time, somehow.

I'd have to have had remembered it to see it, but maybe I would... uh, keep remembering something. Remembering it brighter and sizzlier every time, just before I remembered it, until I am and was sure, that it was and would have been only a minute ago that the world will explode around me.

I'm sure I remembered it that way...

Just a second ago.

Rich enough

Wouldn't it be awesome to be rich enough to have an apartment in every single apartment complex in Denton? So if you're out walking, and suddenly you need to take a dump, or you need a band-aid, or you're hungry and need a sandwich, or your phone needs a charge, or you're just fed up and want to lock yourself inside four walls, a ceiling and a floor, and a door... there, you'd have it. All of those things. Just a hop, skip, and a jump away from almost any phenomenon.

Wouldn't that be cool? And you could have houses where there ain't any apartments, so you're covered.

Cool, right? All you need is money. Bunches. Money in bunches, that is. Not so difficult.

Ok, that's what I'm gonna do.

Transistor

Ok, there's this song by 311 called Transistor, and the awesomest part goes like this (lyricwise):

You're a transistor
A lightning resistor
Conductor to the mother star
That's what you are

So I was listening to that, because Transistor kicks a certain amount of boo-hiney - which, as it just so happens to be - is exactly the maximum amount of boo-hiney that can be kicked before shitzkies start flying into the fan.

So, that was happening, and for one of those rare, elusivial moments, time stopped and I was genuinely happy and at peace.

THEN A SHOOTING STAR SHOT RIGHT PAST WHERE I WAS LOOKING, EXACTLY AT 'CONDUCTOR TO THE MOUTHER STAR, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE'!

Man. It was awesome.

And to top it off, another just went whizzing by. An even awesomer one, just 47 seconds ago.

It was pretty cool, man.

Blue and orange

Blue and orange. If you let the sky roll over, and you hang around for it, that's what happens, slowly. Blue and orange.  They're complimentary colors, by the way.

It's best if you're not careful at all, so that you can be taken by surprise, because...  which is better, anticipating a beautiful thing, or having it knock you over the head while you're daydreaming?

This is what baffles me. It just rips away my ego. It tears a hole in my necessaries and shreds my gives a craps.  And it's just a couple of colors thrown onto the world, is all it is. It scares the shit out of me that one day I'll die, and that I'll miss so much beauty.

Surprise!

You know, things can be really terrible for Joe Schmoe. A regular person can suffer quietly for years, and nobody'd ever notice.

However...

What's still great about everything is the element of surprise.

4:48 am

It's 4:48 AM (I wish it was earlier; more time for this) and there is a lightening storm on the eastern horizon. It's blazing away like a crazy thing... an experience which, by its mere description and wonderable purpose, provides a beyondness separate from the fromthing of your before... you know. The thatnesses. The THATNESS of an object or phenomenon which demands your constant attention. THAT essential item required for the maintenance of your own sanity. THAT thing... the thing that you must do, so that THAT person doesn't have to suffer an undue amount of his own THATNESS, because you let your THATS became THOSE, escaped from your self control. By kind of selfishly removing yourself from them, you know.

THAT, the one I mentioned earlier, happens once you become separated and cast away from the things that you value as having worth (funny how hatred and misery become a tradable commodity) such as rent and bills and money and all of the built in common denominators of life that I am forced to use to calculate the color of the final reduction. God help you if your fractions aren't ready, for the world of decimals and long division awaits. As if...

Why does injury invariably require insult? It's as if Ms.Pate was just waiting... as if it were her sole purpose, after terrorizing two generations of families, to infiltrate every funeral of every family she contaminated and injured, as if she had the right - the gall to assume that living in the same small town and teaching horror, not long division, to the kids of her previous experiments, made her ok. And that it gave her any kind of right to insinuate her shitstink into the memory of my grandpa's funeral.

Do I seem bitter about this? I just realized, that maybe I do...

Nah.

So, has anyone pissed on Ms. Pates' grave yet?  20 years ago, when the old witch finally croaked, I swore to. I haven't yet. That witch terrorized two generations of Davis's. Now that so much time has passed, I dunno if I will... I don't think it would be right. But that... Creature... was a cruel sadistic monster who garnered enjoyment, mostly through inflicting terrorizing humiliation upon the fourth grade children entrusted to her charge. I was one, my sister was one, my brother was one, heck, even my dad was one. We all suffered under that evil bitch.

I got sucked into a digression of my own device for a minute or two hours there. I was originally talking about a lightening storm. What happened? I know, but I'm not telling. But, I have it all recorded for posterity to combustabulate about.

Anyway. I'm at the Baptist Church on Bryan and Crescent, and I'm gonna look for someplace higher to watch the lightening storm. That's really all I wanted to say. And that was two hours ago.

Ice cream.

CRITICAL UPDATE - THIS INFORMATION MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE

Consider for a moment, if you will... the common banana. It's the fruit - a berry, actually - of a large, herbaceous flowering plant. One of the millions of species of living things with which we share this beautiful blue orb, floating serenely through the cosmos. Small. Yellow. Unobtrusive. Conveniently packaged. Tasty. Friendly. On your side. In your corner, and rooting for you. Benign. Harmless... Oh. And it wants to kill you.

Consider for another moment... potassium-40. A radioactive isotope of potassium, with a half life of ONE BILLION, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY ONE MILLION YEARS. It's the only known isotope that undergoes all three types of beta decay, emitting electrons, neutrinos, anti-neutrinos, positrons, and gamma rays. You know... little tiny teensy weensy things that will kill you dead, dead, DEAD.

So. You know all that potassium that bananas are jam-packed with, that you've always been told is 'good for you'? Well, surprise! That potassium just happens to be potassium-40!

If you eat 10,000,000 bananas all at once, you will CERTAINLY DIE from RADIATION POISONING!

And...

If you eat 274 bananas a day for seven years, you will experience CHRONIC SYMPTOMS of RADIATION SICKNESS!

And...

If you blend 10,000,000 bananas together for one 12 oz smoothie, the potassium-40 will reach CRITICAL MASS and undergo FUSION, initiating a chain reaction and unleashing 100 megatons of NUCLEAR HELL!

Bananas. Who knew?

Raccoons are stupid.

Uh... ok, that's not something you see everyday.  Allow me to elucidate.

So, what happened was, I had just walked back to the Shmelvin Elvin  after work to retrieve my reading glasses, and while I was there, Mr. Chin bought me a beer (remember, I wrote a little thing about that wallago), and then I headed back to my compartment.

As I was walking past the swimming pool, I heard a ruckus of rustling leaves behind me. I figured it was either the wind or some other pedestrian, kicking his/her way through autumn's golden gown, so I didn't give it another thought.

Then it happened again, but closer and quite a bit more ruckus'd up than before. So, what I did was I turned around to see what was ruckusing up the leaves, and what the heck did I see barreling down the breezeway, heading straight toward me, hell bent for hash browns, were two big fat raccoons - so big and fat, I thought that they were dogs at first.

Well, those Supercoons didn't look like they were in agreeance with the idea of changing direction, and according to Newton's first law of motion, which states -

'Every big giant fat raccoon or pair of great big giant fat raccoons, in a state of uniform motion, tends to or will tend to remain in that state of motion, unless an external force is applied to it or them.'

- I decided right then and there that I did not want to be that external force, so I stepped out of the  breezeway... and I'm glad I did, because otherwise I would have been like... POW!... you know, like... KAPOW!... like when Charlie Brown gets nailed by a line drive that knocks him ass-over-tea kettle and right out of his clothes.

As that was happening, I was fairly shouting, "Look, look at those two raccoons, look at those two big ass giant raccoons, look, look at that, oh... look at 'em, they just went 'round the corner, look at those coons, damn ain't they big, look at 'em go!" to nobody in particular, as there wasn't anybody around anyway.

After about five seconds of quiet, I heard this 'ACK ACK AAAACK... ARP! ARP! YIP -  AAAAAAAK!' sound, like a dog getting put through a machine, so I did the only thing I could do. I tore off after those two raccoons and around the corner!

And guess what I saw. Just take a wild guess. What I saw around the corner. Go ahead, I'll wait.

.......
.......
.......

Yup, you guessed it. Two big fat raccoons humping like there was no tomorrow.

Oops that was a typo

It's early late weirdness. 6:35 in the AM.

At about 4:50 cops were all over Fulton by the high school, and I got 'stopped' for the umpeezillipnth time in my life. They asked if I was as teacher at DISD. I said no, and they asked politely if they could, before they did it, take my wallet and get my ID out of it, and run it through the angry system, which they did. Thank you, come again, sir, probably very soon, you know, because and stuff.

Now the suns about to come up, and I should de-conscious myself soonly.

Sometimes though, at times like this... the small hours, you know... early, with a pearly great light over the ebbing everything, is when I almost lose that sunshiny

Oops, that was a typo.

A flawed fundament

Ok. You may have noticed, as I have, that we have electrons, neutrons, and protrons. You know, that make stuff.

I mean... protons.

What? Protons? Well heck, why not protrons? I mean, we've got  electrons and neutrons...

Well, some smart apples a hundred years ago figured out that there is a such a thing as these things, so they started naming them according to their descriptions. Electrons are electric, neutrons are neutered, and protons are proteins. You know, common sense stuff.

Well, what happened after that was, some other smart apple came along and started taking well enough and throwing it into a crowd, and suddenly we have textbooks that say electrons are inherently negative, because getting electrocuted is bad, and that's negative, I guess. They just had to go and get personal with an electron.

And we can't say neutrons are neutered anymore, because that's politically incorrect, because dogs and cats are people too... whatever. So now we have to say that neutrons are neutral. I mean, it's the same difference, ain't it?  Neuter, neutral... whatever, it comes out in the wash meaning the same dadgum thing.

And don't all proteins, every last ever loving one of them, have protons as one of their essential ingredients? Huh? Tell me I'm not right! Show me a protein that doesn't have a proton in it, and I'll show you a pork pie hat made out of pork pot pie and baked into the shape of a fedora and worn by a porgy and applauded by a bess, just like tweren't nuthin but a thang about it at all (and they should be called protReins, because Tron is the root word of awesome, by the way).

So what do they do to the proton? Not only do they forcibly rip away the Tron...

Oh boy.  Ok, gimme a sec to take a couple of deep breaths so I don't go splitting atoms here.

Alright. Firstly, before I shed light on this atrocity... they say that the reason its called a proton is because it has a positive charge. I mean, it's not just an arbitrary name, is it? Proton? There has to be some correlation between the name of the thing and the property of the thing, right? Like pro means positive, I guess? Right? Haven't I just demonstrated that concept with the electron and the neutron? Yeah, whatever, about them screwing up the names... they were still following a recognizable system, however flawed. Like pro for positive. Like an analogy that a third grade teacher in a one horse town would come up with... it's clumsy and ignorant, but at least it balances.

But the proton... and the electron too, as a matter of fact, now that I think about it... damn it, I'll just come right out and say it. The proton should be called a positron, and the electron should be called a negatron!

... no, not a Megatron, you stupid stupid machine! Negatron! No, not negate on... negatron! A negatively charged Tron!

Yeesh...

If you weren't just an idiotic integrated circuit, then maybe you would understand how bringing up the name of an evil transformer has absolutely nothing to do with what these words are all about... with what they MEAN, man! You can't just go making suggestions for spelling corrections all willy nilly... you've got to consider the CONTEXT surrounding the word that you're trying to auto-spell!

Anyway, dammit...

Right? Right?? Who's with me? I mean, why does an anti-electron get to be called a positron, instead of an anti-negatron? Which was discovered first? Or, more importantly... which are there more of in the universe, PERIOD?

There are so obviously more electrons (negatrons) than positrons (anti-negatrons). So why does the opposite of an electron get to be called a positron???

It ain't fair, dammit!

Meaningless beauty

I feel compelled... that is, I have to say something about it. I must attempt to communicate the experience. I don't yearn to share it... the essence of it yearns to be shared. And the yearning of it compels me to try.

It's like this... it's like something a newborn baby would dream, the first time it slept, and the first dream it dreamt. That's what it looks like, the thing that's got me worked up.

It's... but looking at it makes me feel old, like just the seeing of it forces the roots of it right into me, and the receiving of it is like... knowing the end of something. Something vast. But that's all I can see... the end of it. And it makes me feel so old...

And if beauty can be found in anything, then I use that justification to support the description and the feeling of what I'm seeing, which is meaningless beauty. Being poleaxed by the majesty of the ending of an ancient thing, without knowing or understanding the substance of it, or the history of it, or the life of it or the essence of it, or the meaning of it.

Just the end of it, and it's hammering my awareness like the gamma rays that a hydrogen bomb slams rudely and forcefully and absurdly into violent existence. But it's still there, the thing I'm all worked up about.

I look at it now and then again, and it's always an oldness. What it does to me, is it conveys to me a feeling of never having to breathe again, and being ok with that, and just accepting it without panic.

My Favorite Animal

Our teacher asked what my favorite animal was, and I said, “Fried chicken.”

She said I wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t have been right, because everyone else laughed.

My parents told me to always tell the truth. I did. Fried chicken is my favorite animal.

I told my dad what happened, and he said my teacher was probably a member of PETA.
He said they love animals very much.

I do, too. Especially chicken, pork and beef. Anyway, my teacher sent me to the principal’s office.

I told him what happened, and he laughed, too. Then he told me not to do it again.

The next day in class my teacher asked me what my favorite live animal was.

I told her it was chicken. She asked me why, so I told her it was because you could make them into fried chicken.

She sent me back to the principal’s office. He laughed, and told me not to do it again.

I don’t understand. My parents taught me to be honest, but my teacher doesn’t like it when I am.

Today, my teacher asked us which famous person we admire the most. I told her, “Colonel Sanders.”

Guess where I am now…

A dream - Impaled

A nightmare. Horrible.

Two Mexicans on scooters are riding down the highway, a man and a woman, middle-aged, dumpy. She's following behind him, then he tips over and takes a spill, and she stops. He gets up and walks angrily back to his scooter, as if the wreck was her fault, and he picks up his scooter and hits the woman with it and knocks her off of her own scooter. Then he walks over to her and kicks her in the head.

She's in a daze but she manages to get to her feet. He picks up a heavy piece of junk from a nearby pile and hits her in the chest with it, knocking her back down. She falls onto an old sofa that's in the junk pile. He picks up an old board from the pile of junk. It's jagged on one end, and he walks over to her with the intent of stabbing her with it. She's big and strong, so she picks up the couch and blocks the thrust and then heaves it at the guy. He takes off running into an adjacent field and into a ravine and she runs after him, more concerned than angry.

He scales a cliff wall on the other side of the ravine. She finds an old disused ladder and props it up against the cliff and climbs up after him. As I'm watching this I'm trying to think to the woman, no, no, no, he's going to push the ladder, don't climb up there, he's going to push the ladder away from the cliff and you're going to fall, but she keeps climbing up, and I'm thinking to myself, how does she not know what's going to happen?

When she gets nearly to the top he pushes the ladder away from the cliff and she falls backwards and lands against another cliff wall. The ladder falls away, and she's stable for a moment, but she begins to slide down the cliff face, and then she falls forward in earnest. She falls face first for a long time, screaming and flailing, and I find it hard to continue watching even though it's a dream. I know this is going to end badly. I'm shocked, because just five minutes ago they were riding their scooters down the highway and nothing was wrong at all, and now this woman is faced with her imminent death.

As she falls, she flips over, and I think she's going to land heavily on her back, but she lands in a thicket of dead trees and is impaled through her back and out through the sternum by a sharp branch. She screams and struggles and screams and screams and screams and its just horrible, the most horrible thing I've ever dreamed. I can see every detail. Every tiny single little detail. The angle of her legs as she hangs there, with little splotches of blood on her blue jeans, the slight bouncing movement of her limbs as she flails and struggles weakly. Her  white t-shirt with the jagged end of a tree branch protruding from it, with a growing red stain expanding outward. The horrified look on her face and her wide open eyes as she stares straight upward and just screams and screams with her mouth wide open, in such pain, enduring such pain.

I'm actually fighting back tears as I input these words, grieving for the suffering of a woman who isn't even real, just a figment of a dream. Can you believe that? I've never had a dream this horrible, this detailed, this visceral.

As I watch all of this in my dream, I'm hoping that she'll die soon. That she'll die very very soon and that it will be over and her suffering will end, but she doesn't, and she just continues thrashing and screaming. To make it worse, my dream camera zooms in for an extreme close up of the point of impalement, and I can see a previously unnoticed side branch that has traveled through the back of her neck and exits right under her chin. Her situation is unimaginable, unthinkable, impossible, but there it is, there it is, there it is there it is there it is

Then it became something I was watching on TV, and dad got up and changed the channel. And I was disappointed. And I hate myself for feeling that way. It was just a dream but I hate myself for feeling that way.

Stand inside

It's just really sensitive... is that the right word? Sensual... no. Immediate? Painful? Up close? High resolution?

Anyway, it's that kind of imagery, that I've just failed to describe. If you've ever been in love with someone for years, then just conjure up that feeling.

What I mean is, that's what this here is about to be about. The words that are about to appear line up with the feeling that I was just trying to describe. I'll leave you to it...

It's a song, though. You Kind of don't get the full impact unless you hear the song. Whatev. I hardly ever post song lyrics, so here goes.

For the last time

You're everything that I want

And ask for

You're all that I'd dreamed

Your home is here

Within my heart

And for the first time

I feel as though I am reborn

In my mind

I'm telling you how much I need and

Bleed for

Your every move and waking sound

In my time

I'll wrap my wire around your heart

And your mind

Who wouldn't be the one you love

Who wouldn't stand inside your love

Protected and the lover of?

The middle of a moment

Have you ever been in the middle of a moment, say for instance...

And then only realized, after the fact, that the memory you'd just made is the feeling that you've been searching for, but couldn't ever find?

And that you can never ever ever make it a present moment thing, even though you remember it that way?

That thing I just said there, that I wrote up there... that's a big problem in my life. Doesn't seem like a real problem, does it? Funny though... but it is.

Ok, here it comes, finally. It's raining leaves.

(I'm outside)

Ok, here's one! This will be one of those, the memory of what's happening now, as the front pushes in.

(It's blowing cold, and hard, outside)

Wow. I kind of just want exposure to have it's way with me, here, outsized in it, because wow. I can really feel it, Without any chemical help.

(And everything's lit up under the sky, but ain't the wind cold)

It's a moment, that I only live for, like I was saying wallago.

Isn't that funny? Here's one of those impossible to remember moments.

Dang.

Run through with a paper clip

I can't believe this just happened. I'm having a little bit of trouble wrapping my mind around it... but as far as I can tell, uh...

I was just about to go to bed. I was getting ready for it. I just wanted to go into my bathroom nook and use the bathroom before I went to sleep. Is that a whole lot to ask?

Stepping, walking, doing the ambulatory thing to the bathroom nook and...

OHMY GOD OWWW WHAT OW...

And then I collapsed onto the frikin floor and, jeez.. I don't think anything can prepare you for the sight of a part of yourself having been impaled, run through, from one side of a part of you to the other side of that same part of you.

THAT'S WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MY PINKIE TOE DAMMIT, A PAPER CLIP, SHOVED STRAIGHT THROUGH, IN ONE SIDE AND OUT THE OTHER OH! FU....!

DAMMIT! !     ! Z. !

Ok. I'm in little bit of shock. It ain't every day that you see a piece of yourself run through from one side to the other with a piece of metal. I can't find the paper clip. I yanked it out. I didn't even feel it when I did that, although I was expecting it to hurt like hell.

I couldn't believe what I was looking at, before I yanked it out. Not a special effect. Not part of the storyline. No budget at all. In one side, and out the other. I sat there and howled something awful for about two and a half minutes. I sounded like a wounded animal, for quite a little bit of a while.

It's kind of funny, now that I think about it after the fact, but it still sucks though. Oh, and it hurts too.

Dammit. What the F.

Ok, here's a picture of the blood from it. Dayum, but didn't it spurt. Look at the spurt marks.

Dangit. I can't believe a paperclip went all the way through my toe.

Dangit. Ow.

Just ow.

F.

Outlines

Tonight I was out walking, and there were low clouds that reflected city light back down into everything. 

Especially evident were the silhouettes of things. I spent a couple of minutes tracing the skyline of trees and rooftops  against the oddly illuminated night sky. Several times it felt like a dream. It feels like a dream now.

Lots of houses had their curtains drawn open and lights on tonight. Maybe it's because of the pearly light outside. I stopped each time I noticed and looked inside. The interiors of living houses fascinate me and attract me. That lives happen in there. Actual lives, that I'll never know about. So many loves and closenesses and things that really matter... things that really matter to so many somebodies, that I'll never ever know about.

It feels wrong somehow. The separation of us from each other.

So catching a glimpse through a window of a coat flung onto a banister is an intoxicating validation of my hope that love exists as a real thing, and that suffering is a natural counter-balance which exists to open up insight into gifts like these.

What else but love could bring such a thing into existence, a carefully constructed stairway railing which exists solely to provide careful support in order to protect a precious life against the calamity of chaos?  And the fact that such a love is ubiquitous in nature and never scarce, is proven by the coat which is casually thrown over the trailing. Evidence that such careful love must be so common as to be taken for granted.

A happy ending.

What my night is like.
I go home, after work.
I get ready to go, some place.
I do it almost every night,
I don't know where I'm looking for.
I got my music
I my battery
I got my alcohol
I got my lifeline
I'm ready.
You'd think a person
Would get tired of it or
Rid of it.
Truly Amazing, how it
Never gets boring.
I guess there's a waiting thing
Happening.
I mean, why do this
Over and over and over and over
Unless I'm waiting for, or
Anticipating some kind of
Change.
By the way,
I ain't trying to be a poet here.
I'm just drunk and it's easier like
This,
Line by line.
Seriously.
I remember I was talking about
A change.
An anticipation.
See, I remember. I ain't that drunk.
Anyway.
It's like...
I never have time to myself
Anymore that isn't just sad
And depressing.
Sure, there are diversions...
But do all diversions, are all
Diversions supposed to lead
To the same place?
Back to the same feeling.
Back to the same place where
I thought I started from?
When did it
It's like
This is how it
This is how it is
This is how it got...
You know, though, I'm really
Lucky to have a good sense
Of humor.
I mean... otherwise the horror
Would be full time horrible
But at least it's
Occasionally funny
Because I have a good sense of
Humor.
Plus, I'm a real chickenshit
Deep down
Cause I'm way too scared
To put a gun to my head
Hey I bet you weren't expecting
A happy ending.

Whoops, my bad.

Tonight (last night actually, I'm writing about last night tonight, but I started writing it last night, when it was tonight last night so when I said tonight wallago I actually meant last night) I went to Walmart to buy some HotHands, because it's getting a little chilly at night now, and check this out... I need to keep my phone warm. That's right, it ain't for my hands. It's for my phone.

That's why I went to Walyworld, to get a phone warmer, because my phone craps out when it gets cold. Yeesh... just yeesh. So after I did that, I purposefully took the path behind the shopping center because I wanted to listen to music and sing out loud too, and I didn't want to offend/scare/kill anyone (har har... more on that later). So I did that. I took the path behind the Walymart to Bonnie Brae, and loaded up some music that I haven't listened to in years... Danzig. I loaded up Danzig, and whaddya know, I still remembered all of the words! So there I went behind the Mal-wart, singing all of those Danzig lyrics at the top of my voice. What do you think could go wrong? Take a wild guess. Whut? No guess? Ok, I'll just tell you.

So there goeth I behind the Martywaltz, and I'm singing Danzig, loudly. And fairly well, you know?  But also scarily. Frighteningly. You can't help that when you're singing Danzig though, because you know... Danzig. The whole package is like, uh... say for instance, if Elvis were to clamber up out of his grave and form a new band called 'Elvis and the Dementors'. That would sound pretty much like Danzig, I think.

So that was happening, and in the middle of it I did a quick sweep-survey of the immediate terrain, then I checked in with Echo Base, and I was just about to issue an 'all clear', when... whut the heck? There behind me was this young girl - young, as in probably in her early teens - about ten meters back and a little to the right, just a-strolling along behind me, through the construction area behind the Allfart, at 2:30 AM.

AARRGH! I went, in my mind. So I immediately curtailed my solo performance, because... well, because, you know. Little girl. Geez... but then about a geez-and-a-half later, I was suddenly possessed by an insane resolve, and I thought to myself:

'Whoever this kid is, it's allowing itself to be bombarded by my Danzig performance behind the Ballshart... I mean the Walmart, according to its own choice. Why then should I feel the compulsion to ix-nay my performance? Just because I have an accidental audience? Very well then, I shall perform!' And thusly fortified, I continued forward, wailing.

After a couple of verses worth of solid wails, I caught a glimpse with my peripheral vision of that girl running past me and making a bee line directly toward the chain link fence which separates the area that's under construction from the front parking lot. She didn't stop AT the fence as much as she was stopped BY the fence, in that she purposefully impacted it at full speed for the sole purpose of getting there as quickly as possible, at which point she immediately attempted to scurry up and over the thing to freedom and safety.

Well, dingleberries! There I'd went and done scared the living daylights out of that little girl with my Singing Demon Impersonation. After that I saw no choice except to shut right up and attempt, oh so carefully, to walk straightly forward as quickly and quietly and nonthreateningly as possible, so this I did.

Eventually my path became perpendicular to her position at the fence, and when it did, I couldn't help but to look, and when I did, I could see that... huh? She'd... why, she'd up and gone and went and did and done took off her shoes, and was scaling that chain-link fence barefoot!

One part of my brain, the detached aloof part, was thinking, 'Ah, smart girl, to remove her shoes so that the gripping characteristics of the vestigial toe appendages may be more effectively employed! This must be an ancient behaviorial mechanism passed down over the eons through the genetic lineage of our primate ancestors. Interesting how the 'fight or flight' response is, even in modern homo sapiens, still determined by basic instinct as the most effective means to expedite escape and ensure survival, thus guaranteeing the continuation of the strongest genetic heritage via natural selection.' At the same time, the other part of my brain - the horrified, self loathing part - was thinking, 'Damn, what kind of  monster in the closet under the bed am I? When did I let this... THING... happen? OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I BECOME?

So, properly horrified, I hastened to remove myself from the situation, both physically and temporally, at the maximum speed allowable utilizing my limited powers of locomotion. And do you wanna know what happened next? Do you wanna know that? DO YA?

What happened next was this. I had just about almost gotten to Bonnie Brae, when whaddya know, right out of the blue, who goes whizzing by again? Yup, that girl! She's not sprinting this time - she's speed walking, and she means business apparently, because she actually brushes me with her elbow as she whooshes by, jacket in one hand and shoes in the other! She hadn't even put her shoes back on! One second I was alone and properly chastened, and the next, WHOOSH-NUDGE-SEEYA, there she goes, arms pumping and bare feet flapping on the pavement! A quick hook to the right on Bonnie Brae, and she's gone!

DAMN! WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED!

My sky

Wow, I feel like I might fall over. My knees are kinda weak. Nothing to do with the ankle or the sore leg. A crazy moment just happened, a rare one out of a few... one out of maybe a dozen in a lifetime.

What happened was, I was out walking after work, as I am wont to do, and I was listening to Pearl Jam, as I usually want to do. I was listening to Black. That song goes way back for me as a heartbreak song. My first real heartbreak had that song in it... her name was Erica, and she's long gone. But my love for her is still there, in that song.

Isn't that funny? I hardly ever think of Erica anymore, but the love is still there, under a whole lotta cellar doors. And if they all get opened, there she is. That lovely hurt is right back on the surface, as fresh as a brand new wound, for a moment or two. It's not a bad thing... just a memory of a love that was, and of a feeling that still is.

It's like that for every girl I've ever sacrificed my heart to. There's a place in my heart that opens now and then for each one, and if you could watch an unfolding timeline of my entire life, those heart openings would be visible as major events, even though they're random and not really of a because. They happen, and they would be there, like bright red blood splatters, but pretty.

I know I digress a lot, so just know firstly that there is no secondly, and that I didn't forget about why I started writing this thing that I'm writing. It's because of a major event that happened tonight, and I felt that some exposition was needed before I got into it, and I think I've done that. I think I've expositioned what I need(ed) to say. I don't know what exposition means.

So I was walking along, it seems like eons ago now... Yeesh.

Anywho. I had just exited the C_V_S on University Drive, and I'd put my headphones back on to resume my Pearl Jamming. 'Why Go' was just finishing up, as it had been playing as I'd been checking out at the counter (I always take my headphones off when I'm at the checkout counter), and so the next song, 'Black', was happening as I put my headphones back on when I left the store.

I had just gotten to Carroll, walking down Sherman, when the song got to that part... you know that part, it goes like this...

"I know someday
You'll have a beautiful life.
I know you'll be a star
In somebody else's sky,
But why can't it be mine?"

And just as the memories were opening up because of the music, and just as I was starting to think about putting Leah into that memory, because I still dream about her almost every night for years and since, and because I haven't buried my love for her hurt yet...

And just as that was about to become a thing that happened, I saw a shooting star. Really bright and really brief. Black and brief, in my sky, I think... wasn't that my sky?

Statistics

Current population of the US - 320 million.
Current number of addicts in the US - 25  million.

Approximately 8% of the population of the United States are drug addicts. Wow, doesn't that sound ugly? What if I rephrased it...

Approximately 8% of the United States population are addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Hmmm... that's better, but still somewhat abrasive to the senses, and therefore undesirable as actual knowledge.

What about this... 23.8 million United States citizens, or roughly 8% of the population, currently struggle with substance abuse.

There! Now it's clinical, yet personal... intimate, yet quarantined... rife with intelligent statistical data, yet accessible to the simple sympathies of the overwhelmingly common asshole which comprises a something or another amount of the rest of the population of butt-heads do-gooders nay-sayers shit-snackers fart-knubblers butt-munchers yuck-nuckers and blue meanies.

Or, to put it a little more truthfully... a big-ass portion of the world population of human beings are turning to drugs as a means to simply 'stick it' in modern society - that is, to make their lives merely tolerable, as an alternative to blowing their brains out all over the rug and leaving just the worst mess for somebody to have to clean up, because that's just rude.

Did I mention that I happen to be one of the lucky 8%?

Wait...

Did I just say lucky? Hahaha! Apparently my subconscious has a morbid sense of humor, just like my awakenous! Hahaha. Huh. I meant unlucky. Har har hardee HAR HAR, motherfucker. The joke is on me... and you, too!

Seriously though, you do see how the joke is on both of us, right? How I typo'd the lucky without the 'un', which is a joke on me because I made the typo and because it's tragically ironic or something, but how it's also the joke on you, because you didn't know at first that I didn't mean to type 'lucky' instead of 'unlucky', so that you might have thought I was being jokingly tragically ironic? You understand that, right? What I just explained, about how the joke can be on both of us? You get it, right? Good. Onward, ho.

It's like rolling up a D&D character when you're born. You get all of these strengths and weaknesses, which manifest as various physical and mental attributes. You're good at this, you suck at that. You're more prone to this, you're less prone to that. It's just overwhelmingly likely that you'll be absolutely miserable and afraid all of the time ever, it's underwhelmingly unlikely that you'll be well adjusted and happy and just generally ok with yourself and your life.

So on the average - ignoring for the moment specific contributing factors such as demographics and genetics - the average US citizen has an 8% chance of becoming an addict at some point in their lives.  That is, you're more likely to come down with a 'pretty bad case of cancer', in the... in the general stomachly area of the abdomen, or something... to which you can refer to people by kind of vaguely patting your tummy, indicating the presence of... something malignant, I guess in the general area of the tummy... than to actually become an addict.

I honestly can't decide which one I think would be worse. I dunno. Can I trade in my addiction for cancer, to give it a test spin? Just to see if I like it better? Who do I talk to about that? Obama?

I have super reflexes

Lately I have super reflexes.  Within like, the past year or so... maybe a year and a half. 

I've been making spectacular saves left and right. Catching things that fall off of, bounce away from, slip through, or blow past other things, such as shelves, receptacles, fingers, and awarenesses.

Like paper for instance, which is especially hard to catch while it's aflutter. And also things that would normally break and shatter and make a horrendoufying mess, like a  plummeting wine bottle that I'll just happen to save miraculously with my instep, like a hackey sack.

Plus, wayward objects like smart phones and hot spots, which go flying away from and out of, like wet bars of soap.

And other things, such as beer bottles and salad plates and wine glasses and babies tossed into the air in rooms with low ceilings and high speed ceiling fans.

So, yeah. That's been happening, the whole 'holy shit, I've got super reflexes' thing. Seriously, I ain't trying to be funny. I've got suber-uper reflexes now, where I never did before.

It's got me thinking. Like, you know that trope where somebody discovers a thing that makes them awesome for a short while, only it's for some ridiculous price... like you gotta watch your dog die horribly, or you have to have sex with your uncle, or maybe you just flat out die after 24 hours? You know?

I'm thinking that must be why my reflexes are so good now. I think I was probably sleepwalking our something, and found some kind of cursed magic lamp with an evil genie that granted me these super reflexes. And now I'm just waiting to find out what the curse is.

Or, the other possibility is that I got abducted by aliens, and they gave me super reflexes, just for the helluvit.

Or, it could be that I'm the alien, like Superman, and I'm only just now starting to develop my superpowers, because I'm going through space puberty.

Any one of those reasons is just as good as the other. It's just so hard to choose which one I like best...

DANGIT!

I'm nuts

I just took this questionnaire online after googling 'why does life always feel like a dream', and the result was 'severe depersonalization'. That's what the dream feeling is. Depersonalization. A result of isolating myself from reality due to severe anxiety.

Oh...

I'm nuts.

Well, that's not really a surprise, I guess.

What is surprising is that it all started to gain momentum and really become a phenomenon after Jerral died, and that it took a year and a half for me to realize that that's when I stopped going to church... almost immediately after I had learned that Jerral had killed himself.  It wasn't a conscious decision.

My shadow

After only a few years of walking in circles, you'll come to know your own shadow very well. It becomes a recognizable caricature of yourself. A simple description that surprises you, upon realizing just how much of yourself you've invested in it. It's you, undeniably. A dynamic, always shifting outline, describing the motion of your life. It's always colored black, even when it's in full color. It may seem as if essential details are missing, but the motion of the black is rich with representation. Details are superfluous. The outline, the shifting outline of the black, the uniform ingredients of the shadow, the outline, the border of the smooth, unperturbed interior, is all that's important for meaningful identity. If you only take the time, and make the effort to notice... it reacts, to what you're feeling, to the motion of your life, as a picture of your life, through a filter which un-taints the seeing of it. It shifts and stretches, and squashes and fades and disappears, and reappears faithfully, reflecting a picture of yourself for the lower part of your eyes that see what we've forgotten how to remember, and it's always there. You can count on it, even if it's not there. You don't ever have to be afraid. It'll always come back.

How to get it

You (you in the general sense, that is) don't know what it means to miss a person anymore, after a long while and a half. You feel the feelingness of the missing, like it were gonna build up into it, but then you kind of forget how to get it. How to remember that thing that you miss.

That's weird, because... it's an empty shell of a memory that I miss now, but then where does the impetus come from? And why do I miss a feeling that I can't even remember? In the doorway of my minds eye?

Eyes don't have doors, in a practical sense. Get a grip, Ash.

Lost inside

You know, you can get lost inside of a song and forget your own identity for a while and become the actual vibrations and the math and the sunken structure. A phenomenon rolling through four dimensions that makes and disappears, makes and disappears as it rolls, like a platen over your atom strings. You know... how you can almost become a song.

Haven't you ever just wanted to be a song? Born at the beginning of it, living your life in the music of it, and dying when it ends? Think of all the different lives of each song. So many lives. Some happy, some sad, some tragic, some violent, some loving and some hateful, but all of them beautiful to somebody.

I've always kind've wanted that, to be a song. That abstract longing to be not an organized collection of atoms making a me-ness, but an organized expanse of vibrations making a sound-ness. Still me, you know? But a music instead of a body.

That's sorta the state of mind I was in about twenty minutes ago, as I was walking and immersed in the sound of music (the hills are alive and have eyes, and all that, you know). I guess I'd forgotten that I have a neck and a head, with orbs of seeing imbedded in it, for just for a second or two because abruptly and without warning, the thing in front of me slid downward, and a new thing fell into place from above (that was my neck pointing my head and my eyes upward, I later deduced... as in a minute or two ago), and suddenly I was walking toward an open expanse of stars instead of a planetary horizon.

That only took like, three quarters of a second to happen, so I wasn't actually back inside of myself yet. I was still just a vibrating feeling with some cognitive powers, and when that starfield hove into view, I thought it was a wormhole, or a warp portal, or a stargate, into my dream memories. For just a second there, that's what it was like...

Like, you know how you can never remember exactly how a dream begins? It's always just sort of a blur that becomes a dream at some indistinct point. That starfield was like the dream gateway that you can never actually remember. The portal into the dream place.

That's why I had to type this up, write it down, punch it in, get it out of my head and onto a substrate that's compatible with the common, awake-type of reality.

Concentrated dream-feeling. A singularity of dream-feeling in that doorway. I think there's an event-horizon there, that you cross over when you die. Oh...

That's what the dream-feeling is? The relativistic effects of warped dream-time, near the dreamularity?

I don't think you're supposed to be awake for that. And that's why it's driving me insane. I keep getting it when I'm awake. Is that it. Why is that.

How to describe it

How to describe what I feel?  I'll start with the simple things. It's just on the plus side of warm tonight - slash - this morning. My left knee hurts on the left side of it, near the back of the patella and slightly underneath, making me limp a little. On a drunken scale of 1 to 10, I'm at a 3.  I've been drinking constantly since I got off work. I feel gyp'd.

I feel like I've, on the whole, faked out the anxiety today. That means I've successfully distracted myself from it for most of the time that I've been conscious today. It's like hide - n - seek. Funny, I just thought of that. Not that there hasn't been anxiety... just not mine, primarily. I'm sorry. It's just today.

Cops have been being where I've been being a lot tonight. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to, being tailed by the DPD as I wander aimlessly after work night after night after night, thousands of times. I think they used to hope that they'd catch me felonizing something. Now after so long, I think  they're just bored and checking out what the familiar ghosts are wandering, and doing to.

I wonder what kind of nick name they've given me. The Roving Red Handed Reader.  That's how I'd nick myself if I did. I wonder if the DPD has a nick-name for me. That's something, huh? How many people would realistically have cause to wonder something like that?

If my knees could cry, there would be dirty rivulets running down them. Like right this moment, I feel disappointed and deflated. It's not for any particular reason. It's just a feeling I almost had a few severals of clusters of seconds ago, that didn't pan out You know?

Now, now I am starting to feel terrible, just like I want to force open a rusty valve wheel, like in an old submarine, and scream out all of the years and years of wails and sorries in one loud and obnoxious and ugly HONK, to wake up the neighborhood at five ay em.

Brcause misery loves company. But I didn't, and instead, I'm doing this thing. My brain broke a couple of years ago, as if, things weren't, bad enough, already. It broke, right on the nudge of the crack between the oh wells and what ifs, right above the I'm sorrys, I'm losts, it hurts"s and forgive me's..

I feel my footsteps on the sidewalk like colors. Brown for the heel striking the cement, black for the toes after, and over again and over again, and over. And shades of gray rolling underneath. A rich tapestry of blackish & white-ish sorrow, and I'm on top of the narrow concrete wheel of it, walking it and making it spin, and giving it life. 

Damn. That just then, I think, was probably the most depressing thing I've ever spelt out.

I don't know what hurts more. Being sorry, or being too tired to make up for it. Is that a natural human condition? I don't want 'sorry and afraid and exhausted' to be the words that described my life, but you know...want in one hand, and take a big ole ugly, smelly dump in the other, and see which one gets filled up with the molecular by-products of complex life, and then wonder what the 'f a miracle is, or if the word is just a synonym for a practical joke. Oh, a big one, I mean. A big practical joke. Not just a normal one, like on April Fools. I mean a... a quantum one, or something.

Greetings

Greetings, fragnasticators from planet Schmelvelinia. I am EliAsh from planet Denton.

You are not EliAsh from planet Denton. Therefore, you are not from. However, you are not necessarily not to.

Therefore, henceforth you shall now also be to too, but not too to. Forthwith, while to is still you and you are still to, you are not to be TOO to too, while remaining to, and are too to, too... but not TOO to; vis-à-vis R2D2. Ergo, absurdum illegitimi non carborundum.

Hencewith, all collapsinating of local quantumnasticating waveforms shall be collapselapsicated and dictatorated anonymouslessly, and preferably with no observationalistics running amok all over the place.

Forthforth, going forth and so forth, all new non-observationalasticationals of the collapsicationation of any form of waveform shall forthhencely and posthastily be forth forwarded forward for six sixtieths of a sixpence to the Prince of Whence, hence the son of King Wenceslas, who backed his car on the feets of Stephen.

Boogers

You know what I just realized? Boogers have absolutely no smell whatsoever.

A dream - too filthy

A nightmare. I only just remembered it... from sometime last week.

I awoke wrapped up in blankets, shivering and sick, and lying on the cold uncomfortable floor of the old house on Sena street. The walls of that house are like the inside of a cave... hard and rough and cracked, and cold to the touch. Like stone. I was nestled up against one of those walls. It was cold in the house as per the norm, since there was no gas or electricity or water, and there were candles burning in every room.

As I lay there, miserable and feverish, the feeble gray light of a cold and overcast morning began to seep inside through the windows, and I saw that the house was filled with people. Matt's friends. Some kind of party that I had nothing to do with, and that I didn't feel like caring about at all.

I rolled onto my other side and saw that Fr. Justin was there. Here, at the party, at my house. Of all people, I muttered to myself as he knelt beside me on the floor. I was embarrassed to have been discovered in such an undignified repose... unwashed and apathetic, wrapped in soiled blankets infused with the smell of days old sick, with a thin layer of accumulated grime coating my skin with an oily sheen.

Fr. Justin didn't say anything. He just got up and looked down at me lying there, then he kind of jerked his head in the other direction, indicating that I should get up and follow him. Then he walked into Matt"s room.

So, still wrapped up in those dirty blankets, I managed to stand somehow and I shuffled and stumbled my way toward my brothers room. From the kitchen I could see Fr. Justin sitting in there on the edge of the bed, quietly surveying the squalor as he waited for me.

The room was filthy. It stank. There were discarded plates containing the remnants of rotting food, and in every corner piles of mouldering laundry were heaped alongside open bags of stinking garbage. Beer bottles filled with swampy cigarette butts littered every available surface, and the carpet was infused with cigarette burns. Several ashtrays had spilled over onto the floor.

Then I came out of the sick and to myself, and I was suddenly aware that the entire house was in a similar condition, and so was I. It was me too, I realized. Filthy and despicable and repugnant and foul to the senses. The moisture of my body and of my self and of my will had become standing water... poisonous and stagnant. I felt embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed.

I tripped on the threshold of the doorway to my brothers room and landed on my knees. Fr. Justin was still sitting on the edge of the bed, looking down at me with a vague expression of distaste. I cupped my hands to receive a blessing, but Fr. Justin stood abruptly and said, "No, there's too much filth. It's unclean."

He strode out of the room and I hurried to follow him, knockering about and bestumbling forward on my hands and knees. Out of the room and into the kitchen, still wrapped up in those dirty blankets, and back into the living room where I saw the hem of Fr. Justin's robe flutter as it disappeared through the doorway into my own bedroom.

It took me a little while to crawl the distance through the kitchen and into the living room, through the mingling crowd, and to my room. I saw Fr. Justin in there. In that place that used to be my bedroom, in the old house on Sena street where I used to live. The one with the cold walls, rough and hard, like the walls of a cave. He was sitting on an old wooden stool that I used to know something about... just inside the doorway, hunched over and smoking a cigarette.

My eyes widened in alarm and I tried to reach for the cigarette to take it away from him, and at the same time I tried to cup my palms for a blessing. Then I fell, and as I fell, I wailed in dismay. And then, somewhere inside the utter clusterfuck of chaos that was unraveling the goodness of myself and of my sanity, right then and there, in the mean time of a night mare, I caught a glimpse of Fr. Justin flicking a cigarette ash onto the floor and muttering, "It's just too filthy, too filthy. Forget it. You're just too filthy..."

The dime sized spot of pain right under your sternum

Have you ever been listening to a song that reminded you of someone lost to you, maybe a friend you haven't seen for years, or an ex, or someone close to you who died, or maybe someone who is still in your life, and who you've shared a lot of it with?

Do you know that feeling that happens right underneath your breast bone, or your sternum? When you hear that music. You know that feeling, right? It's a definite physical sensation, almost like a pain of reminding. It refers to a segment of memories which contained that music, but the happening of those memories never knew this feeling I'm trying to describe because it didn't even exist when those memories were made... the feelings only manifest after the fact, usually by about a year. What? Why?

What IS that? It feels good and bad at the same time. It's like a pressure, about the size of a dime,.. but very concentrated. Right underneath the hardest part of your chest.

How does this thing happen? Just what in the heck is the mechanism for the physical manifestation of something as insubstantial and abstract as an emotion? What's it for? Why does it hurt and attract at the same time? Pain is supposed to be a tool for the learned avoidance of things which can harm us. And there's the pain, right there under the bone and inside the flesh. But then why does it also attract? It's like, when a moth dives into a candle flame. It's like two polar opposites conspiring just to 'ef with logic. Attractive and painful. Compelling and miserable. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria!

I demand an answer to this crap. Or at least a reason for it. Even if it's a stupid reason, as long as it's the truth.

You

I went home from work early tonight. Relatively early after staying late, that is. I was feeling sick... ugly.

I gotta get home and wipe my feet off, man. I hadda kick those frikin' boots off. OH... bad idea. There sure are a lot of empties on the floor in my compartment. I guess I need some new ones. New empties... some future past tense empties? Some past future tense not-empties?

You know, there sure are a lot of dead bodies in the ground. How do I know that? It's obviously because I used to be one of those dead bodies, so that's how I know. Through experience. That, and also... well, how to describe it? Through a simple feeling... I mean, a simple lack of feeling, fuel, and energy to work, pretend, and make it through the day.

However, I did learn through that very same feeling that I'm not the kind of guy who'd cheat a friend to make it through the day, and because of that, I also figured out that someday they (you know, everybody who isn't me) are gonna exercise an unreasonable amount of strain on my simple way. To cheat me into cheating, that is.

Meaning... you know. Meaning that I know someday that they are gonna separate the part of my brain that can discriminate the friendly from the enemy.

Oh, they've already done it. You are the enemy.

That guy

So, Jason Lee is kind of a regular at my store. He's come in several times, and it's not uncommon for somebody to approach him like they were old friends, just because he's a well known actor.

Well, I just feel like I gotta say it, but I ain't that person. When Jason Lee comes to my register when I'm working, I treat him like a normal dude, like as if he wasn't famous or anything. Sometimes all I say is, "How's it going. That be all for you?" And other times, I'll turn on the natural charm, just like I would with any ordinary slob who comes into the store who isn't Jason Lee, and I'll say something like, "Yeah, that's my favorite Gatorade flavor too," or "Cool hat bro."

My point is, I think that as long as I keep treating Jason Lee like a normal person, and not some kind of meta Ultron humanoid who is too good to be true when he comes to my register to buy Gatorade, that maybe possibly someday he'll want to be my buddy.

The mean time

Meanwhile.

We all know the... word(s)? The expression? Meanwhile. It's two words scrunched up close together to make a new word.

Kinda like meantime, except that a meantime - as in 'the meantime' - is more like a 'something' that you can be inside of and experience directly and personally. A meanwhile, on the other hand, feels more like an outside observation of a meantime.

I've come to realize lately that the meantimes of my life that I feel compelled to share might not be easily given away... in that they're easy to give, but maybe not so easy to. receive. They're abstract. Maybe they're too mine and not enough yours, and therefore can't be yours, or anyone else's. That makes me a little sad, if that's the case.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm making all this shit up as I go along.

Anyway.

I've always assumed that the feelings that spring out of all of these moments I feel will naturally wind up seeping into the soil of future hours, taking root there and spreading the information of my experiences into and throughout a more or less timeless condition, conducive to a specific type of existence called being human.

I'm not so sure about that now, and that makes me nervous, and anxious, and unsure... and it hurts, too.

Life

Do you ever stop to think about what's going on in all of the life around you? Just the plant life is enough to consider for now, so... say for instance, you're walking along and you're surrounded by mostly plant life, which isn't unusual. What that means to the average person is that it's there, it's motionless, and it's green, and it's reliable.

Think about it though... in all of that green life, there are complex things going on all the time in every cell of every motionless blade of grass and every different kind of leaf, at every second, and during every piece of a piece of a second.

There's motion going on down inside those cells that you can't see. Lots of hectic motion. The green machine of life doing what it does with chemical reactions, moving molecules around very quickly, using the energy from the sun and from the nutrients in the dirt to push around specific electrons to different atoms... choosing the ones that work, rejecting the ones that don't, sliding rapidly spinning RNA molecules up and down chains of DNA, unzipping and combining them, making copies, editing, repairing, constantly fighting against the unmaker, and all according to an immaculate and permanently ordered set of physical laws which spend electrical charges like pennies against the landlord of entropy, so that this invisible machine may persist constantly and in fantastic, amazing motion, completely dedicated to the singular purpose of delivering that impetus which is sustains the momentum of life.

How would we be different if we were aware of all of this, all of the time, just naturally? The same way that we are aware of the sky being blue? As something that's taken as a given, as common sense... the invisible blur of life at the atomic level which is always happening, like a jet engine that never ever stops, constantly spinning, always moving? As if we were perpetually embedded in the basic nuts and bolts of the alive parts of the universe, one second at a time, and also aware of it? Would it be wonderful?
.

Coraline

I watched Coraline yesterday on my day off. Something I noticed as I was reviewing it after - I do that with animated films to find easter eggs - and there was one, right off the bat. There was graffiti on the back of the moving truck that said, 'stopmo rulz'. You know. Stop-motion animation. I got such a kick out of that, I forgot to review any more of it.

So Anywho. That little girl, Coraline... she's just a straight up little shit, ain't she? Why is she so mean to Wybie? Calling him 'Why Were You Born', just a minute and a half after meeting him, is just flat out abusive. Even after evil mom 'fixes' Wybie so that he can't talk, Coraline is just all down with that. "So, he can't talk? I like it!" she says. And it's not like she's just blissfully unaware that something dastardly has been done to Wybie. How would she have liked to have had her larynx magically unexisted from her throat, or worse? She even asked him if it hurt! That's exactly the same thing as being aware of empathy, but willfully choosing to ignore it! Evil! Just as bad as the mother, or worse!

And she didn't show any sign of giving a diddly squat when Other Dad sacrificed his life to stop the evil robot mantis from forcibly manipulating his appendages into chopping her to bits, saving not only her life, but the soul of one of the ghost kids. What a heroic act! But Coraline doesn't give an old dusty fart.

At least she gets better a little later, when she unties the fake smile from Wybie's face, and I guess Coraline saved the day at the end, and was even almost nice to Wybie, except that she still punched him hard enough to hurt. I guess it was too much to just be nice, without any kind of qualifier.

Oh, and one more thing. That was just truly, fundamentally, elementally, unforgivably stupid to throw the unhanded needle fingers of that disembodied needle hand, STILL CLUTCHING THE KEY for Pete's sake, down into the well. It shouldn't take a mentat to be able to anticipate possible future events based on past events of a similar nature. That is, if a disembodied needle hand can come back to life, then maybe, MAYBE some unhanded needle fingers might be able to do the same thing? YOU THINK?!

Maybe I'm being too hard on Coraline. She's just a kid, after all. Maybe when she grows up she won't be so mean and stupid.

I watched this with Leah when it came out back in '09, and I don't remember any of that. However, I do remember that Leah used to have this short lived obsession with posting pictures of herself on Facebook with buttons for eyes. I didn't really like that... it kind of freaked me out.

A dream - no weapons

A dream.

I was at the old homestead in Omaha where I grew up. There was an army at the back of the house, occupying the old back bedroom that used to be a porch. I was in the living room.at the front. I snuck through the kitchen and saw them preparing their heavy weapons. "Hey, I thought we had a treaty. No heavy weapons." The leader of the back room army just kind of smirked and continued polishing some bomb casings. "Fine.heavy weapons. I have nukes. I'll just use nukes."

That got to him, and they abandoned the heavier stuff and they started firing crossbows at me as I ran back through the kitchen to the front room. I turned as I was running and pulled a pistol, and fired at the leader.

I had a bullets eye view in extreme slow motion. It took about 30 seconds for the bullet to reach the enemy. Right before it went into his eye, the viewpoint changed. It shifted out a little to the side, and I could see the bullet slowly, ever slow slowly, penetrate his eyeball. It made a very slight dent at first, but then the surface tension of the eyeball gave and the bullet just slid in through a hole that formed a perfect seal around the bullet as it penetrated, until the length of the bullet had passed all the way into the eye, and there was just a neat hole that sloped inward. The view followed the path of the bullet through the face, tracking it as it went through the head, and as this was happening, wherever the bullet passed, blood would be forced out through little irregularities in the skin... a dimple, or a mole near the ear, and when the bullet passed the ear, blood came out of the ear, gushing out, but oh so slowly. The bullet finally exited the back of the head in a dramatic and extremely messy fashion.

Confession, part 1

To everyone I've ever known, or who has been a part of my life, however distant:

Hi. I'm Ashley Davis. Anybody remember me? If not, that's ok; I am and always have been an extremely shy creature. If you do know me, or did happen to notice me at one time or another, maybe you've also noticed the palpable waves of anxiety which exude constantly from my pores, and were or are careful to avoid those waves lest they insinuate into your own pores, or into the pores of other things close to you that have pores. Has anyone ever noticed that when in close proximity with me, now, or way back when, or whenever? I notice it all the time.

Anywho. I just had to get that part said and out of the way... mostly so that anyone who didn't know it will now know, under no uncertain terms, that I'm a dude, and not a chick. And Matt Davis is my brother. Matthew Davis. Surely some of ya'll know him, right? Ok. So, here's me; Matt's little brother, Ash. People call me Ash nowadays. Not Ashley. ASH. GOT THAT?!?

No, I've never had any issues due to the cold, hard, riveted in tungsten fact that yes, I am a guy, through and through, no doubt about that, but I'm also a guy who happens to be saddled permanently with a girlie name. I mean, when I was a little kid at elementary school, it would be perfectly fitting for anyone from a single child all the way up to an entire posse of children to point at me while chanting in a sing-song manner, 'girlie boy, girlie boy, Ashley is a girlie boy!' And after a few years, it wouldn't even bother me anymore. It's just a simple fact that being violently branded at birth with a girlie name absolutely did NOT wound and/or scar my developing psyche during my formative years.

For some reason, I'm compelled to reiterate this now:

I was in fact a little boy, but instead of having a little boys name as did other normal, functional little boys, I had a little girls name. Fortunately, it seemed as if I were seemingly perfectly ok with this. Allow me to hallucidate.

Oh, and I just made up that word on the spot, by the way. It's a combination of hallucinate and elucidate. That is... to elucidate, as in to explain in more detail, and to hallucinate, which is what I'm doing in my mind as I relive those old memories like a bad acid trip. Moving on...

AS I WAS SAYING, I WAS A LITTLE BOY WITH A LITTLE GIRLS NAME, AND THIS WAS OF COURSE THE CASE DURING MY FORMATIVE YEARS, AND NEVER EVER EVER EVER DID I EVER SIGN MY NAME AS ROBBIE DAVIS TO MY HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS SIMPLY BECAUSE ROBBIE IS A BOYS NAME AND NOT A GIRLS NAME, AND I WAS ALWAYS WELL ADJUSTED, EVEN THOUGH THROUGHOUT ALL OF THIS, BEING A BOY WITH A GIRLS NAME THAT IS, MY DAD WAS A TERRIFYING ALCOHOLIC, WHICH MERELY ADDED TO THE CONFUSION, IF YOU CAN IMAGINE AN 8 YEAR OLD BOY WITH A FATHER WHO RANDOMLY WENT INSANE FOR NO REASON THAT MY 8 YEAR OLD BRAIN COULD DISCERN, MEANING THAT HE WOULD OCCASIONALLY DRINK IN EXCESS, RESULTING IN A DRAMATIC AND FRIGHTENING CHANGE IN PERSONALITY, BUT TO AN 8 YEAR OLD WHO DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT, IT MEANS THAT HIS DAD CAN JUST PACK UP AND HEAD RIGHT OFF THE HILLS OF LA-LA LAND FOR NO REASON AT ALL AND IS LIABLE TO DO THAT AT ANY OLE TIME AT ALL, JUST ANY OLE TIME, AND JUST IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING, TO GO INSANE MEANS TO BECOME A TERRIFYING ANTI-DAD WHO IS THE EXACT AND COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF THE NORMAL, OK, AND RIGHT WITH THE WORLD DAD, RANDOMLY AND WITH NO WARNING OR REASON AT ALL, AND I NEVER KNEW WHY UNTIL AFTER I WAS ALL GROWED UP!

Whoops, my caps lock key must have gotten stuck, probably due to an ancient sodium deposit left over from all of the forgotten tears that I must have cried incessantly at some unspecified point in the past. I really don't remember. All I know is that I've always been deliriously happy, ever.

Ok ok ok. I realize that I have some issues, which naturally makes the story of what I'm about to tell - and there is a point to all of this carrying on and such - a painful process, in a life-ripping kind of way. And what's a tragic tale of woe and regret without a liberal dash of random malfukshuning chunks of human psyche? It's kind of useful actually, as I'll have plenty of material with which to be self deprecating in order to make bearable the telling of it. And confession is good for the soul. I hope.

In truth, I don't really know to what extent having a girlie-boy name had to do with why I've always been morbidly, psychotically, and pathologically shy, to the point that I've turned to drugs as viable solution #1, and possibly maybe even suicide as viable solution #2 if solution #1 becomes untenable, or if a life just naturally tilted toward the path of least resistance - that is, straight to hell in a hand basket - doesn't get me first. I do remember however, that being a little boy with a girlie name caused me quite a bit of distress growing up. Maybe I'm just defective, and would have turned out this way inevitably, even if I'd been named something manly like DickJackson Jones. Who knows? Anyone? Seriously, if anyone knows, tell me. It won't change anything, but it would at least be funny if that were the case, and I'd get a good guffaw out if it.

So, if I do happen to bumble comically like a cat with no whiskers into my own gloriously inept self destruction, please let it be by falling out of an airplane, high over a populated area, strapped to a grizzly sized teddy bear stuffed full of dynamite with a five second fuse, and with no clue as to how I wound up that way. Then I guess my problems would be gone... not solved though, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Gone ain't the same as solved. That would be like simply erasing an incomplete equation for eleven dimensional string theory from the blackboard. Voila. No problem. And no solution, either... because, you know, I really don't wanna die. I'd rather live and be happy. Wouldn't anyone? I know Jerral would have.

The reason why I went off like a lunatic like that with a mad exposition of my life and development and my insecurities and everything is because in describing all of this, I have to describe my part in this horror story I'm telling, and and to do that I need to describe myself, with all the ugliness intact (and that was just an introduction, by the way). And also, I dunno... I might uncover something good. Maybe that's the reason I'm really writing all of this, because honestly, hating myself is killing me, slowly.

The other character in this little midden heap of memories is Jerral Wayne Johnson. Anybody remember him? He's dead, by the way. Jerral killed himself, and I understand to a large degree why he did it... and although I know that the responsibility for his death does not lie squarely upon my shoulders, it's impossible for me to simply ignore the part I played in it, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for it.

I didn't know Jerral personally until the spring semester of '90, when we ran into each other at NTCC. My grandma had taken me there to register for art classes. My grandma tried so hard to guide me and to make sure I started out life on a good path. She taught music to me and gave music to me for twenty years, she tried to teach me the value of an honest days work and an honest dollar earned and saved, she tried her best to help instill in me good Christian morals and habits, she helped me to buy my first car... and she paid for my first semester of college. That's what we were doing that day. She did so much for me, and tried so hard doing it. God, I'm so sorry, grandma. I miss you.

Like I was saying, I didn't know Jerral until the day we actually met at the community college in Mount Pleasant; although I knew of him, of course. Practically everyone I went to school with did, because the man could draw. He had skills that I can only dream about. He was an amazing artist, while I was merely good; although he consistently claimed that I was better. What a considerate lie. I was in awe of him, and I still am, even though he's gone now.

Another thing about Jerral is he was one scary, intimidating son-of-a-bitch, who would just as soon squash you like a bug as look at you... dammit though, that wasn't really him, it was just an image he'd created to deal with his shyness. Yeah, as it turns out, down underneath, the big scary monster was just as shy as I was.

That's why the two unlikeliest people in the World - or at least the county, which is still saying something - came together, and beyond all reason and expectations we actually got along, the two of us. I never would have imagined it back then, that this monstrous human beast, armed with a level infinity pencil and about a hundred pounds of muscle (did I mention that Jerral was only about 5' 7", but really really really really bigly, as in muscularly gigantic?), embodying everything about a certain type of person that it's possible to be afraid of, could ever be anything to me but a source of terror to just get away from and be in awe of from a safe distance.

After I'd registered for all of my classes, which included - let's see if I can remember - Drawing I, Design I, Art History, British Lit, and... is that 12 hours? Yeah. Those. So after I'd registered, and as I was standing there with my newly minted class schedule in hand, who do you think would come barreling into the Registrar's Office like Thor, Odin's son, but Jerral Johnson. Did I mention that Jerral had long blonde hair, like some sort of demigod straight out of Norse mythology? I gotta say, the whole Viking warrior look was a big part of what made Jerral so intimidating.

As soon as we locked eyes, he strode toward me without any hesitation at all. My stomach dropped to the floor as I watched this monstrous tidal wave of legendary status advancing toward me like an unstoppable wave of inevitability, and with a sinking feeling of dread, I understood the truth of it. 'The Jerral' had just registered for art classes. I saw the schedule in his hand. I knew that his was an exact duplicate of mine, in all but ownership.

"Hey Ashley, hey man, hey! Dude! Wow, I finally get to meet you! Are you here registering for art school? Lemme see your schedule... hey, we've got all the same classes! We can ride to school together! Dude, you're a great artist! I can't believe we finally got to meet!"

And that's how it began.

To be continued...

Something decidedly not-not-bad

Yesterday morning I awoke to something decidedly not-good, although I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  So I lied there... lie there, lay there... laid there?  Layed there?  How the heck do you say that, anyway?  I've always avoided describing the... act of... the act?  It's not really an act, just lying motionless, is it?  The non-act?  Anti-act?  WTF?  Why is it so difficult to describe or otherwise just talk about a state of prone, motionless. horizontal, semi-conscious BEING?

Anyway, do you see why I've always avoided describing it, even if I have to lie and say that I awoke sitting in my chair, or that I sat down and went to bed?

Screw it.

This morning I awoke to something decidedly not-good, although I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  So I sat there in bed for a while, trying to figure it out, until I finally grew tired of hearing the audio file of a humming air conditioner that I have playing on repeat every night, otherwise I can't sleep, ever.  So I got up out of my chair.

I mean, my bed.  I got up out of my bed and I went over to my laptop and I turned it off.  And that's when I noticed it!  I couldn't hear the sound of the air conditioner!  What?  No, dumb dumb, not the sound file of the air conditioner... the SOUND of the AIR CONDITIONER!  The real thing, doofus head!  The actual Air Conditioner, Conditioning The Air!  Yeesh.

Anyway.  That's what it was, the not-good feeling.  The feeling of the slightly-higher-than-normal-ambient-air-temperature that had to have been at least 73 degrees, because that's just how fragile my sleep is nowadays.  Only five degrees above 68 and my brain, which hates me by the way, just decided to arbitrarily move the whole system, from individual cells all the way up to my complete organism, beginning with the hypothalamus, up to... or is it down to?  To DefCon 1, without even consulting me about it first!  With the effect being just like and as if Kyle Reese had busted violently and right up into my slumbering noggin and screamed, "Wake the F up if you want to live!"

And well, you know, the situation really WAS almost that dire.  For all intents and purposes, a terminator might as well have actually come back in time to destroy my air conditioner, because the result was exactly the same.  My AC was on the blink.  Congrats, SkyNet, you suck, and I still hated you and never thought you were even kind of cool before you nuked my AC, when you were just a movie trope.

So. There I was, marinating in the depths of an almost just about realized state of permanent despair of an actual real and bona fide nature, according to reality.  Geez.  It was almost like the kind of disastrous thing you'd joke about because you're sure it would never ever happen in a bazillion years, but then it happens, and all of a sudden, that joke is 'too soon', and you're the A-hole for telling it.  THAT'S how bad it was!!

WTF was I yammering about, anyway? OH. THE AC.

So I sat there, really and actually sitting there, in a real chair, sitting and clicking the breaker switch over and over, hoping beyond hope for an instantaneous and effortless solution to the AC being completely dead and my compartment being completely warmly, and getting warmlier.

After several minutes of that, I had just about decided to sell myself into slavery when I noticed this wire that stuck out from inside the unit (I had that plastic front piece taken off, so I was privy to this information) which, as wires are sometimes wont to do, just kind of curled up with no obvious purpose and disappeared underneath the whole non-functioning thing of mysterious machine parts. I only describe it now because it becomes important later.  Right now, it don't mean diddly-squirt to me.  I mean, right then it didn't.

So before I even knew about that wire, I'd happened to notice that wire, and that it was pretty much submerged in this puddle of carpet water (my AC leaks copious amounts of water, making my carpet perpetually tropical in the everywhere places that I usually put my sock-clad feet when I'm in relax-in-my-swivel-chair-and-watch-a-movie mode).  Submerged in the jungle of carpet water.  Was the wire.  That's what I was saying, right?

Well, that leak kind of irritated me just a tad bit at that moment, because I have to keep all kinds of pans under the dadgum thing to catch at least some of the water that leaks out and onto the carpet.  And now the AC wasn't just leaking... it was actually Crapping Out.  It was right in the big ass middle of f'ing off to the hills, right then and there... and me, with just 4 hours of sleep and waking up to this mess, witnessing up close and personal the whole glorious clusterfuck in its stupid-ass, butt ugly entirety.  Sorry for that. It communicates how I felt at the time.

So what I did was, I grabbed hold of that wire with the intention of yanking it right the F out of whatever it was that it was in, and whaddya know.  As soon as the (frayed) end of that wire was pulled clear of the carpet puddle, that AC KLONK'D right on and started humming and blowing nice, cool, 68 degree conditioned air into my compartment.

In conclusion, what happened when then was now that I just now  described just now was so improbably awesome that nobody could have ever thought it up as fiction, until after right now, which is now then, right now.  No, I mean yes, that actually happened.  Really.  The awesomeness of it was like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back, at the end, when the Millennium Falcon was just about to be captured by Darth Vader's personal super star destroyer, when R2D2 pulled that thing out of the wall and turned it around, and the blue light came on, and the hyperdrive kicked in! That's what it was like when I pulled the wire out of the carpet jungle.

A deep blue thing on a black gray wideness

Sometimes, when I'm thinking about giving in and just calling it a life, I'll find myself - or maybe I just need to notice it at that moment - I'll notice myself somewhere, imbedded in something that takes my breath away, invariably. It doesn't have to be much. Just a deep blue thing on a black gray wideness is all it was this time.

At a moment like that, usually I'll feel an instant of concern. Almost like a miniature panic, that the beautiful thing I'm imbedded in will die if I'm not existing to witness it, for it to be witnessed. And at that moment, it doesn't seem possible that a beautiful thought, once thunk, could ever be unthunk or unmade, or unappreciated... unthinkable.

Experiencing that, and thinking the resulting thoughts, leads me to the conclusion that everything, every single fermion and force carrier that makes up every single thought and every single thing, and everything else too, is exactly beautiful. And that realization makes me even more afraid of dying, because what if...

Ok, lemme expound for a sec. I dunno if this is just raw egegotismotism, or if it's an example of the natural state of conscious life, but for the past twenty or so years, I've been grieving in advance for the music in my head that MIGHT disappear forever when I die. 'Might' is a recent qualification; within the past so and so years or so/and so/on..

So, since hell is plainly a result of free will and all, and to...

I mean, you can't voluntarily disconnect the music, because...

That would be unforgivable,
to...

Dangit. Sometimes this happens. I'll get off track, or lapse, or forget, or shit myself out of pure terror, then lose the gist of what I was, like a lunatic, going on about like a lunatic.

Something about being terrified, with music playing in the background. I'm sure it'll come back to me soon, if I don't get dead first, and I'll finish.

Sorry.

Huh.... but I think all that's pretty much finished, right? I mean, I ain't gotta say anything else about it, I don't think...

Right? You get it, right?

The odds that bullshit will spontaneously occur at any given moment

What are the odds that someone walking a similar route four days a week every week for 1 year, at a 3 mph walking speed, consisting of 1 mile to and 1 mile from a particular destination, with a starting time during those 4 days varying by 10 minutes on either side of 1:00 pm, resulting in a 1 hour walk, plus or minus 5 minutes, would clearly observe the shadow of an airliner flying overhead visibly passing by on the ground within a 20 foot radius of my... I mean, the walkers location, which is also a specific point on that route - say, the cross streets of Fulton and Egan in Denton, Texas, USA - twice in one week? That is, the observation of the shadow of an airliner passing overhead, almost exactly between my location* and the position of the Sun so that the shadow of the airliner is clearly visible on the ground, at that particular time, within 20 feet of my location* - that is, that particular place occupied by the observer, which could be me, or anyone else really, but in this case actually happens to be me - twice in one week, according to the parameters already stated? *I of course mean 'my location' in a general way, in the same way that I can mean... I mean, YOU can mean... that is, You with a capital 'Y', as being the general form of you, of course... can mean the general form of YOU, or YA'LL. Or everybody, plus or minus myself. Do wea'll get it now? That's a new contraction we invented, right then and on the spot. Or, if we're still confused... 'my', or 'our', as in the royal 'we', or 'wou're'. Another contraction I'we (look, that's another one) just invented. Wou'I'wou'e get the idea. We demand it. Moving on. NOW. So, who wants to answer that? I mean... no, I don't mean that. I don't want to know who wants to answer that. Wait. Yeah, I do want to know who answers it... I mean, I don't really want to know who wants to answer that, but I want to know who actually answers it, insofar as the actual answer is concerned. But I don't really care. But what I mean is, the answer to the question is more important than whoever it is that answers it. That is, I mean, the answer isn't more important than the actual person who answers it... what I mean is, the person who commits the Act Of Answering is, of course, more important than the 'idea', or 'concept' of an answer. However, and but, the actual data contained within the answer is, of course, unswervingly, more important than the answerer! But if you just want to answer, but don't really have an answer, then I don't care about you at all. At ALL! You're eating bankable entropy. That's all I can see. You're responsible for the heat death of the universe. Relax. It doesn't even become an issue of the ego until after the answer, so don't get so bent outa shape, for Pete's sake! YEESH. Stomp the person, not the answer. That's my motto. Ok. I understand that most of us are alive and human beings. So, here's a great compromise... in fact, I don't think this is really a compromise at all. This is truly the best of both worlds! Do it like this here, right there, under here, where it starts a new paragraph, starting with OK. Start reading there, and do that. OK. What's the answer?! And whoever answers, just type your name after you answer it, and everything is AWESOME! Everything is cool when you're part of a team! Everything is AWESOME, when... uh. Never mind, that's something else. OK! What was the question again? Nevermind. What was the answer again?

Things that piss me off when I'm walking

Things that piss me off when I'm walking on public roads/sidewalks: Parked cars that block the sidewalk when there's plenty of room in the driveway. Trash receptacles left in the middle of the sidewalk. Tree trimmings heaped onto the sidewalk. Lawn sprinklers that suddenly turn on like a pit of hissing, venom spitting vipers in the big ass middle of the big ass peace and big ass quiet of the big ass night. Right there alongside the big ass sidewalk. When there ain't no big ass sidewalk at all. Mirkwood spiders and their evil sidewalk-spanning lairs. Blundering into an evil sidewalk-spanning spider lair and getting a face full of evil spider. Trying to hold a cigarette, an umbrella, a flashlight and an e-Reader all at the same time when it's raining. The completely out-of-the-blue, excruciating, undeserved pain of suddenly and forcefully receiving a face full of concrete. The completely out-of-the-blue, excruciating, undeserved pain of suddenly and forcefully receiving a face full of concrete, with the added bonus of breaking a bone and/or an e-Reader/tablet/phone. Well-intentioned drivers doing stupid and/or irritating things like... ... slowing down in the middle of a busy street to give me the right of way when I'm waiting to cross. ... stopping in the middle of a busy street to give me the right of way when I'm waiting to cross. ... slamming down on the brakes in the middle of a busy street while I'm right in the big ass middle of running the gauntlet. ... slowing all the down town traffic in the right lane so that I can cross the street, with the left lane zipping by at full speed. ... waiting at a stop sign for me to cross the street when I'm facing the other way, head down and reading an eBook/checking out the internet/writing about things that piss me off. ... using sign language to try to convince me to cross the road when I'd just rather not cross the road yet because I'm reading an eBook/checking out the internet/writing about things that piss me off, and besides, I happen to like it here. ... being cops, and 'pulling me over' at 2:00 AM because everything I'm wearing is black. Happened once. ... being cops, and 'pulling me over' because some do-gooder called me in with an outright, blatant lie that I was casing a joint/shining a light in parked cars/running and jumping around and generally acting like an escaped lunatic from Bellevue. That's happened... four times. ... being cops, and 'pulling me over just because'. Geez, that's happened more times than I can remember. Drivers with butts for heads and asses for hats doing stupid/irritating things like... ... honking at me in the middle of the night when I'm walking on the sidewalk and there's no other traffic. ... throwing shit at me in the middle of the night, like soda cans and cups. Happens about once a year. Only at night. ... yelling things at me in the middle of the night like, "Fag!" and "Get a haircut, hippie!" and "Fuck you, asshole!" and "YEEEAAAHA HAHAHAAAA WHOOOOIEEEDOGGIES!!". Happens several times a year. ... slowly pacing me and offering unwanted and awkward sexual advances through the drivers window. Only happened once. At night, of course. ... driving really slowly past me, then turning around and pulling over to the curb fifty feet behind me and parking there with the engine running and headlights on. That actually happens repeatedly. At night. ... those same drivers who peel off like a bat out of hell when I turn around and approach them, just to have a word or two. I've only done that a few times. Last night, most recently. Allow me to elucidate. I actually thought it was someone I knew... turns out it was a security guard for the High School on Fulton. I guess he didn't notice me turning around and approaching him after he'd stopped behind me with his brights blasting all over me... which astounds me, if that's the case. But anyway. I guess he didn't see me, because when I got close enough to see him (he had the dome light on), I could see that he was taking a good, long pull from a flask that he had tipped almost straight up. By then I'd realized he wasn't who I'd thought he was at first... that is, this security guard who's been coming into the store right before his night shift for the past three years. Naw, tweren't him... So, I dunno what that was all about. Maybe he did see me coming after all, and he was steeling himself up for an encounter with a swig of liquid courage. That's what I'd do. So why'd he stop in the first place then, and provoke me so blatantly, yet so passive-aggressively? I dunno. Once we locked eyes though, and our truths were exposed to each other, I smiled and waved and apologized for thinking he was somebody else, and then I high tailed it. About two blocks later I looked back, and he was gone. Ok, back to whatever... oh yeah. Only at night. Oh. And maybe nothing about that had anything to do with me at all, and I just have a big ass, giant ego. That's prolly it. But at night! A big ass ego at night! Anywho... ... driving by repeatedly, shouting and cursing, thinking they wanna fight me because I CALLED! them on being a dickhead every time they drove by and shouted/threw things at me, and then getting me all tensed up and scared shitless and shaking and ready with my blinding laser, my knife, and my club after they finally stopped, only to peel away after pretending to get out. That's only happened twice. At night! Neighborhood do-gooders who somehow think it's perfectly all right to interrogate me at 2:00 AM as to my name, address, destination, and/or reason for doing a thing at night that they wouldn't even notice, or give one and a half flash-frozen shits about during the day, like say... walking, for instance. Like they were the self-appointed frikin' Thought Police! Sorry, but that one in particular really burns me up. Happens a LOT. AT NIGHT. People who offer me a ride at 2:00 AM and won't take 'no thanks' for an answer. Almost always those same do-gooders. I've had to walk very quickly away from this situation more than once. Night again! WTF is it with everybody wanting to fuck with me at NIGHT??? HUH Sorry. Pardon my French. I speak French real good. 99 percent of the time though, everything is quite peaceful and enjoyable when I'm taking a stroll, even AT NIGHT. Except whenever I'm depressed and want to die... but that's only like, 2 percent of the time. So it's 97 percent of the time that things are ok, not 99 percent. Still, 97's pretty good. Oh look, there's that nursing home. How'd I get out here again?