of cockroaches and light

I Don't Know What To Say About This

2008-10-24T09:47:00.000-04:00

All It Is

2008-09-22T11:04:00.002-04:00

I'm walking down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. I just moved out here and was feeling pretty good about it. I mean, you got the whole vibrant, alive city thing going and everything. You got the 2 million-plus people living just in your borough and what have you--all that personality and all those cultures from lands far away mixed in with the culture that all have come together and created that is NYC culture. It makes you happy. It makes me happy. Then I see a poster for Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua (chee'WOW'wa). Immediately the vitriol rises from darker places, the places that police the culture influx to my mind. Then and there my heart is filled with disgust and what of me that feels compulsion to voice goes to work and I can't wait to get home to write up something especially damning for this movie.

Then I think about who it is that would hear my voice, that would listen. It would be my like-minded friends, it would be the choir. The mothers and children, the teens on unnecassarily wholesome dates, and the fucking Chihuahua owners for whom this movie is meant have no channels tuned to me. These are people who delight in seeing toy dogs talk like people and give an overabundance of 'tude that has long been blunted and limp since the late 80s, and they are so far from me and out of my reach. And I am defeated, my voice squashed for those people are in multitude. Nothing I can say will diminish its opening night box office take. Nothing you or I can do will stop the jaugernaut that is Disney, that is mediocrity.

So I'm left with nothing to do for it but close my eyes, breathe in, and breathe out. It's just stupid talking dogs. It's just occasion for fools to gather and leave the streets to us and ours. That's all it is. So let's you and I, dear choir, keep dancing. Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all that is.

Jody Callahan

My Freedoms

2008-06-26T18:21:00.002-04:00

He reminds me of the Tall Man in Phantasm.

I'm not a fan of talk radio. Sports, religious, political or otherwise. But I loves me some free speech, and will support it in even its most despicable and ignorant exercises. and this is a very good article about the latest Imus "scandal", which doesn't qualify as despicable, though maybe ignorant.

In a related note on racism.

I know it's out there. I know it will never really die. But I had thought it was diminished, or diminishing, to a state of innocuousness. And, no, I don't think it's because people are getting smarter. I just think that the God of Commerce is finally binding us together as one common consumer demographic. Meaning, everything is so cross marketed these days it's hard to tell one group of people re-enacting the media pushed stereotypes of another group from the original or the other group re-enacting the stereotypes of the first group, which has got me all bugaboo and is a totally different tangent. I digress. I thought, naively, that racism was something isolated to the aging ignorant and the rural bumpkin. Also, to throw out the curve ball now, I believed that gamers being such a hounded and stereotyped bunch themselves with their tech-savvy and embracing of this quasi-wonderful age of information would be more open minded. Nope. Not really, anyway. Every time I log on to Call of Duty 4, my current fave on Xbox Live, my poor right ear is beleaguered with rants of youths calling everyone in the virtual world nigger, or faggot, or nigger-faggot, nigger lover, fucking fuck faggot nigger fucks, noob faggot... And they are free to say it. My first instinct is to ban them. Which I can do as an Xbox Live member. I can make a couple of clicks and have them banned for in-game speech violations. And I've done it. Not every time, but when I'm playing with a black or gay friend and they want to leave a "game lobby" because of the racial slurs thrown around I do it just to feel like I'm doing something. And it's ultimately nothing. The offending gamer can just log on under a new tag and hurl slurs as he feels they are due. I never get into it with them. There is no point or end to a flaming war, especially one that would not be a debate or any call to reason from both sides. It would go like this:

Awful Gamer: Fucking nigger keeps nading (grenading) me like a noob pussy.

Me: Dude, it's just a game.

Awful Gamer: Nigger lover. I bet you fuck niggers and little nigger boys, faggot.

Me: Wow, let's just play the fucking game, man.

Then he replies with more awfulness. And all of these phrases I have heard. I'm not going to offer up my versions of a cure. I'm just saying it's real disappointing.

Another thing:
I have never heard a female gamer (who get their own share of abuse) engage in any of the above. And I'm glad that femal gamers are growing in numbers.

Jody

What The Pug

2008-04-15T17:26:00.005-04:00

Where are these things running wild?

Don't get me wrong I actually like pugs. With their charming ineptitude and snotty noses, ceaseless yipping, and boundless energy they are like eternal 2 yr olds on steroids. They are a jolly and friendly breed and are very, utterly harmless. Manic though they are I've never seen one go rabid or angry. Protection-wise they'll yip at an intruder but only to hearken a new playmate.

I'm not a dog owner. This isn't one of those blog posts. I would however be fine with owning a pug. A friend of mine when I was younger, his family had them some pugs, and I recall laughing my ass off at them like they were that one bearded, robust frat brother whose shameless Chris-Farley-esque humor could win over any cynical company.

But my question is where do these guys run wild? Wikipedia suggests they were bred in the way-back times of the Shang Dynasty in East China. But nothing before that. And they were kept solely as lap dogs for company. And, I imagine, entertainment. I mean they are the monkeys of the dog world.

Having thought about the pug's temperament for much longer than I should have, I placed the dog in the arena of my mind against that of the most formidable beast-warriors of the wild, the bear. And I have come up with two possible outcomes. The bear swats down the spritely pug as it leaps itself up at the bear to ferociously lick its face and is then devoured in about three bites.

Secondly, and highly more probable is that the bear is perplexed by the very nature of the energetic pug. At first bear wants to annihilate pug. But pug is oblivious to the impending confrontation and keeps finding small twigs and pine cones to place in front of bear in hopes bear will go a few rounds of fetch. Bear just stares menacingly at pug. Pug stares back with vacant eyes, licks its lips twice, blinks just the once, and then scurries yipping under the bear, through its hind legs and comes half circle back and then bounds itself over the bear. Tail waggingly excited to have an audience, pug then rolls around in the cool dirt, stops to pant, then darts off into the brush in one direction, and with much benign barking and pitty-patty steps over forest floor comes happily back into view from an entirely new and unexpected direction.

Bear is exhausted from the spectacle, and cannot bring himself to destroy something so unassuming. He lumbers back from whence he came. Pug follows yipping and licking all the way. Days pass and the pug gives the sleep deprived bear no peace. Finally, one day a mountain lion comes into bear's territory. Bear is ready to bear down on it when pug finds himself enamored with and then attaches himself to the mountain cat. Bear lets it be. Lion and pug go off together, lion begrudgingly so. Bear is happy and gets his first full night of sleep in days. He wakes up refreshed and approves of his life back to normal. But all in all, there is a sadness. He'd never ever take the pug back, but there is a sadness.

Such is the life of the wild pug, the one creature that God leaves alone and unencumbered because He doesn't rightly recall why he invented the damn thing, and until He remembers its proper purpose He cannot dole out judgment and punishment justly. Go forth, all ye befuddling pugs. Go forth and be blessed by your purposelessness and unappointment in the majesty of creation.

Also, they look like a beatle fucked a monkey, and that offspring fucked a bulldog. Or something, I don't know.

Who Needs Tim and Eric

2008-03-31T16:53:00.001-04:00

When you have a Fred and Sharon! This made me feel stoned. After I watched it I couldn't remember if it actually exists or I made it up. Like a good Tim and Eric episode everything is so mashed up and barely strung together that it borders on experimental and registers more as a vision than a memory. Does that make sense? Does anything anymore?

Good, Like Crossing the Streams Good

2008-03-31T16:16:00.002-04:00

At the moment this is my favorite thing.

The Red Velvet Rope Between Ourselves and Not-Ourselves

2008-03-24T18:49:00.003-04:00

There's not much I can write to hype this vid up.

The truly awe inspiring ironically enough defies hype. I mean what can you say but open your eyes and bear witness? This vid and this site seem to defy internet norms of embedded pseudo-gonzo journalism opinions and typical snarkyness, yet both vid and site encompass the ideal intent of global communication and awareness. If it helps she holds a human brain in her hands and shows it off to some people. As I wrote to another: "It's like walking on the moon. There's so very few who can articulate such an experience. It makes me feel unimpressive and dumb, which is to say humbled." And in keeping with anti-internet fashion I wish I hadn't said that to someone before posting this. The devil take all this self-referencing!

I hope you enjoy.

Jody

Be Kind Rewind

2008-03-04T17:18:00.000-05:00

Be Kind Rewind is not a comedic romp, nor is it meant to be. Rewind is an homage to video/film buffs and imagination. It more celebrates the fun of cinema as the two lead characters Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black) seek to “revision” their video rental store's lost collection of VHS tapes into 20-minute homemade movies. This is most evident in the remake, or sweded version, as it’s called in the film, of RoboCop. The actual movie is bleak and violent with its intended commentary on fascism. Mike and Jerry’s movie speaks more to our collective vision and remembrance, which is to say it’s about a bitchin’ cyborg cop kicking some major ass!

When Mike’s boss and father figure, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), is pressed by local zoning officials to vacate his condemned building, which is home as well as business space, Mr. Fletcher goes on a quest to find out what makes major Blockbuster-style rental businesses work. He leaves Mike in charge while he is away with the caveat that Mike must “keep Jerry out!” Jerry, a paranoid, holds beef with the electric plant he lives beside and in an act of terrorism against it is electrocuted and thusly magnetized, and needless to say Mike fails to keep Jerry out, and so the magnetized Jerry enters the video store and erases all the movies. To meet the demands of a couple of customers who threaten to tell Mr. Fletcher about his charge’s ineptitude Mike decides that they will remake the movies to fool the patrons. The patrons go unfooled but love the movies anyway and demand more. Enter two lawyers representing Hollywood bearing copyright claims and cease and desist orders.

Despite the acknowledgement of copyright issues and the presence of big bad Hollywood Be Kind Rewind is not about a mom and pop business making a stand against a corporation, but is about a small corner of a town that just wants to hold on to its dignity and not be gentrified into a bland indistinguishable part of a city already sold out to the Starbucks-lifestyle.

The movie isn’t all message either. There are great funny moments, and even some Jack Black buffoonery that harkens back to the days of High Fidelity. Jack Black reprising Jessica Tandy’s role in Driving Miss Daisy is hilarious and innocently offensive. One easily loses themselves in the wonder and DIYness of Gondry’s trademark low-tech special effects.

But the real weight of this film comes at the end in its climax. Not to give it away but the inevitable happens, and we’re left amid a people’s small victory garnering the same results as a non-victory, but a victory nonetheless.

My only problem with the movie is that more time could have been spent on the script. The story drags in parts, especially when we’re not reveling in a sweded moment. To the writer/director’s defense a lesser man would have filled these moments with belabored drama of how one must attack his dreams and whatnot. Gondry purposefully, and anti-Hollywood-y keeps these moments light. But those light moments could use a bit more finesse.

In A Nutshell:

The movie is plenty good and refreshing given Summer’s bloated blockbusters; Fall’s melodrama and, for whatever reason, bevy of run of the mill horror flicks; and Winter’s disparaging throw-away movies. It reminds us movie/video buffs why we are the way we are and even reminds that we don’t just have to be voyeurs of our beloved stories.

My Favorite Moment:

There are a few but one that sticks out and amplifies the “reminds us movie/video buffs…” comment is when Mr. Fletcher is in a Blockbuster-type rental store writing down all that he sees that would help his business. In front of a wall of shelves bearing the same big budget Hollywood film he says to himself something to the effect of “give the customer less choice and more copies of the same movie.” Gondry, I heart thee.

As No Favor To You

2008-02-28T13:08:00.000-05:00

I part-time it down at the Taco Mac in Alpharetta. The reason: that's where the good white money is. I've avoided making my bucks in Cumming because, well, it's Cumming. There's good white money here, but there's also cheap white coins, and soiled worn dollar bills here too, if you catch my meaning. Point is the majority of Cumming is lower middle class, and, though I agree they probably shouldn't, they don't tip so high.

Let me tell you about Taco Mac. It's mostly a wing and beer joint for families who need to stare at sports highlights and Fox News while they shove greasy food and over priced beer into their fat white* faces. It boasts, like, a million different beers in its inventory. My point is it is no real bar. It's basically as if the owner of a Friday's or an Applebee's looked around and said "Do we really need sooo much shit everywhere?" Other than that and the beer count, there's no real difference. This is important.

So, as they do from time to time, and it is not lost on me that this happened very near to the lunar eclipse, some days back some of the hill folk wondered into Alpharetta and into the Taco Mac I work. And, friends, they were in a sad way. We learned that they had just come from a funeral. Of course there was no way to guess that as the men folk wore camouflage and the women in jeans and what I'm guessing were their best knitted "tops." The only one of them that was dressed appropriately** was the 16 yr old girl in her Sunday dress.

The deceased they were grieving was a friend and brother to the group. He was 25. He died while dicking around with a loaded gun. For funnsies he put it in his mouth, assuming it was unloaded, and pulled the trigger. In front of friends. At a party.

The grieving gathered made no show of how stupid this is. They called him their homeboy and called him fucking awesome. They would take turns going outside to the patio, this was about 2 in the afternoon, and sobbing openly for all to see and ask what is wrong, which they gladly and stoicly answered.

Have a beer in your grief, friends.*** Hell, have a good strong shot. Don't order shit called Alligator Tears, Kamikazes, Buttery Nipples, Red Snappers, anything with Schnapps, or frozen. And don't argue with the bartender about how she doesn't make them like you like. And I'm fine with getting drunk. I'm fine with an Irish wake. But in a family restaurant? A white collar sports bar?

Should any of you, my friends, die in such a ridiculous manner... Well, I can't promise you much. I won't call you a dumb fuck in front of your mother or father, but that's about it. I'll wear a suit to your funeral. And should I feel the need to check into the nearest Olive Garden or Outback Steakhouse to drink away your memory and your stupid shot up face I will tell my cute waitress that you died shoving me out of the way of a derailed train. And that is no favor to you I'm sorry to say. It is so that cute waitress will put her hand on my shoulder and look me in the eye and tell me how sorry she is, instead of the truth which would only garner an awkward "Oh" and her go off to the kitchen and snicker about a dead dipshit and his/her presumably dipshit friends. I won't let you do that to me, friends. Not in this life or the next.

Jody

* My use of "white" here is to speak to the socio-economic climates of Alpharetta and Cumming. If you are white and can wade through your liberal white guilt to call me out on this I will call you a supremist. If you are white and conservative and therefore without capacity for guilt, shame, or empathy then I will say just that to you and you probably won't get it. If you are black and feel like calling me out on my usage of "white" then I will call you an Uncle Tom. If you are Latino I'll remind you that you'll never really be considered American, and so on and so forth. I will take the time to let you know that as an Injun who has spent plenty o' time among the white people and my brown people on the reservation I have learned to love, respect, and covet the hell out of white women. There, concessions have been made.

**Appropriate as judged by me.

***Funny thing is, after a viewing of a deceased friend me and a couple of others did go to a Taco Mac. It was the only place open and nearby. We had a couple of beers. We talked mostly about how long it had been since we saw each other. We caught up on each other's lives. It was nice.

Testing Some Thangs

2008-02-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

Just letting you folks know I'm still out here. And I'm still watching.

Your Ghost Will Have a MySpace Page!

2007-04-20T15:50:00.000-04:00

A while back I was listening to NPR. There had been a dramatic rise in deaths in Iraq of armed forces. NPR was reporting on one soldier in particular, rather his MySpace page. This particular man had maintained a page before he was assigned his tour of duty and kept it updated as best he could while serving. Over time he had acquired a bevy of friends, most of which he’d never met—as MySpace goes. All were in support of this soldier and wished him luck as well as express their gratitude. This soldier who had died was not famous. Other than two minutes on the radio program he passed on with no publicity. So for a lot of supporters it came as sort of a shock when they logged on to express their support and found posted on his comments by a real life friend that he was dead. His page then transformed into a memorial.

Two days ago I was driving and listening to NPR. This time the dramatic rise in deaths was the Virginia Tech slayings. This time they were reading victims’ MySpace pages so that the listener can get a grasp on what sort of innocence was lost. The page they chose was typical for a young female yet jaded to this world. She loved her school. She loved learning new things. She wanted to meet good, fun, honest people. So on, and so on.

MySpace as a tombstone: it feels ridiculous. Mostly because for the large majority of us MySpace is not necessarily the place where we try to be ourselves. For us adults it’s a creative space to take the place of rock posters, and magazine tear outs of bikini girls we had on our bedroom walls and in our high school lockers. I mean I get to call up a list of my friends and see TV’s Jerri Blank and video game goddess Morgan Webb counted among some of my nearest and dearest. I leave opinionated trivia all the place. As of this writing I have a Jordy video posted on my site—a goddamn infant popstar! If I die tomorrow then a lot of you who do actually know me but not so good that we hang out will log on to find me dead. You’ll have a vague notion of who I was but the only tangible thing will be my Nick Cave video entitled “No Pussy Blues”. What new meaning will that take on then? My headline is “Eliminate the ninnies and the twits.” Will you tell your friends that, yeah, he sure was a major advocate of the eradication of nincompoops? Will you then be flamed by another friend of mine who will tell you, no, asshole, the headline is a quote from a Devo song bearing more subversive meaning than you’ll ever know?

What of those of us who stack up celebrities and panty clad “college girls”? What of those of us who use the site to spread all myriad of propaganda and personal belief? What if our mamas caught wind of our pages, and in the shock of our demise wish to find and see something new of us?

On the one hand our MySpace legacy will show a version of ourselves as how we wished to be. On the other, it’s largely comprised of our pop culture preferences and very little of our actual selves. I mean I’ve only looked at that Jordy video once before adding it to my page. Why? Because it’s fucking stupid and ridiculous and not really worth any extra attention.

So, just like the fact that our bowels evacuate themselves at our death doesn’t need to be in our eulogy, please, on that dark day you learn of my passing delete me as your friend, and ignore my MySpace page, because it’s just a bunch of shit.

Jody

All Those Things You Never Said

2006-11-25T21:04:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of things no one has ever said to me.

You might like this pope.

That's a really cute top on you. (even though it was)

If they close down the community center where are us kids going to get together!?

Jody, I know it's been hard, but America needs you back on that ship.

Since it really should have been your child why don't you go ahead and be the godfather.

All Up in MySpace

2006-11-19T20:48:00.000-05:00

Having typed that title up there I know, like I know the sun is hot without touching it, that I've just spit out a tired, unimaginative cliche, even without ever having heard anyone say "All up in myspace." I've got my finger on the pulse like that.

Well it's been months folks and guess who's got nothing good for you? This guy. What this is is a post for posting's sake. I swore I'd never do it, but I also swore I'd never get sad and drunk and drive along rainy streets on a cold, cold night again, but here we are. So without any ado whatsoever here is a MySpace correspondence of profound interest. Yes, I completely believe that what I'm saying in MySpace messages is the most cleverest. Enjoy, if you dare.

Subject: Hey, Old Friend

Her: hey jody
i still haven't seen you since you've been back in Georgia.
we should make that happen.
404-555-1234
S.

Me: this is very true. how have you been?

Her: i am doing well, i am a floral designer, am about to get a new apartment, and have a kitty. That is the brief summary. how are you?

Me: you have told me you're a floral designer, like, eight times. congratulations on the apartment. i have finally finished transcribing my book, and am now doing some actual editing. i'm thrilled to the bone. so, if well-beings were crossword puzzles, i'd be The New York Times Crossword Puzzle, Sunday Edition. thank you for asking. i hope you have a good Thanksgiving. if you're down this way we should grab some coffee with Kate.

Also, congratulation on giving birth to a baby cat.

love,
jody

Cthullu in the Breeze

2006-06-26T14:02:00.000-04:00

I had been doing some transcribing of my manuscript to computer. This had been boring and tedious work until the other night, just before the good rains came; I had discovered buried in the scribbled texts a coded passage that revealed itself to be a map.

This is totally unbelievable to me as I put no such passage into my manuscript and the only thing coded, or rather thinly veiled, are passages which display an understandable disdain for my errant father and Waffle House waitresses. So you all can imagine my utter surprise to not only have discovered this “map”, but to see that it was written in blood. Not mine or anyone I know. Apparently it was there in the notebooks before, but I, so wrapped up in the good flow of novel writing, had failed to notice that the new notebook I had started was bound in tanned flesh and written in human ink, which is to say blood. Cool, right?

After I fully translated the text, written in script far older than whatever pussy god you worship and that no human has ever gazed upon, it turned out to be a map leading to Cumming’s, my hometown (Central High Bulldogs rule!), Central Park, built not too long ago and is by far younger than the very gods themselves, and erected on ground no more sacred than whatever mundane thing I can think of to relate this to, probably something commonly discarded in trash bins. The Indians were run off in the Trail of Tears and Cumming doesn’t have any hippies so all the land’s value is strictly monetary. What I’m getting at is the destination on the blood map is ridiculously arbitrary, but eerily convenient. So I go, because I was going to anyway. I get a lot of thinking done walking the paved trail that surrounds the park. But mind you were it not for the blood map I would have gone a little later.

The good rains hadn’t come yet, so it was a pretty day; a little hot, a little too humid, but it’s Georgia ‘the fuck you gonna do? There was a ball game going on at every diamond in the park, and a youth soccer game at the two soccer fields. Concessions were being bought, eaten, and wrappers discarded… like so much acreage in Forsyth County. See what I did?

I threw on my mp3 player and listened to some early nineties hip-hop, such as “Ditty” by Paper-boy. So I’m bobbing my head and looking at the clouds, and lo do I spot a cluster that looks remarkably like that masked killer in Scream. Squinting harder, and wanting to see something a little cooler than that openly hackneyed and completely overrated slasher, I see, I shit you not, Cthullu. Or at least what I think Cthullu looks like which is basically some weird human/squid face with fangs and tentacles that come out the sides of the face. Cool, right?

For those of you who know not Cthullu he is a big scary demon monster created by the turn of the century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.

What I noticed, and this is totally effed up, was that throughout that day, after that crazy obscure, and totally subject to my imagination, vision on each playing field of the park teams were losing; while their enemies, their advisaries scored points a plenty and rose up victorious of them. It gets weirder. Some of the precious children, after spending many hours in the hot sun and were tired of and from playing were crying to their mommies and daddies that they wanted very badly to go home. And I knew. I knew it in my bones. All these people, you and myself included, are one day going to die. It is written. I assume. Not in that blood text I found while transcribing my manuscript. That was just a list of directions to the park, or rather a list of directions to that spot from the very spot I was transcribing, apparently written, like, forever ago.

But the really weird thing is. I mean the absolute strangest part of this story, is that I still listen to early nineties rap. What’s that all about? Who knows, friends? Who knows?

The Best Jody Since Jodie Sweeten

2006-05-03T19:33:00.001-04:00

Hello, good friends. Hello.
I was going to post the second installment of my Gene Kirby piece, and I may yet. He's not going anywhere. What I am going to do is give you guys a list. I love lists. Lord knows I have listed more than a thing or two in my life. One day I'll write 'em all down. For now, though, here is a list catch of phrases I'd be known and loved for if I had me a TV show. Speaking of which, remember when cable television was expanding and we'd all thought eventually everyone would have their own TV show, then it turned out to just be the internet and blogs? What a fucking let down.

If I Had Me A TV Show My Catch Phrase Would Be:

This'll cure the homos!

Well, if they could post the goddamn schedule with some kind of consistency I could plan ahead once in a while.

Milkshake, baby!

Things got frothy.

Smells like Rio to me.

Watch out for snakes!

In it or through it, watch out, my fist's a comin'!

Could you hand me that?

I'm sorry, I missed that last thing you said.

Now that was better than a pap smear.

I don't care how free it is, I'm not going.

I want it like Kid's from Kid'n'Play.

The Ghost of Gene Kirby

2006-03-19T21:53:00.000-05:00

Part One

A Hootin' and a Hollerin' He Come Upon Us

We were seventeen years old. We hung out at the Waffle House on exit 14. The Applebee’s next to the new K-Mart was as metropolitan as Cumming got in those days. We’d go to the Wa-Ho on weekends, stay up real late drinking vanilla cokes, and trucker coffee. We ate raisin toast, we ate cheese grits. We smoked Camel Lights. We talked movies and books, and indie rock. We reconciled fundamentalist Christendom with our mature, intellectual and liberal minds. We talked about girls. We wrote bad poetry, came up with ridiculous ideas for movies of our own. I used to wear a cat collar. Despite all the cussing, all the discussion of sex and violence, it was wholesome, I suppose. That is until one night he came busting through the doors, Ol’ Gene Kirby, the self proclaimed meanest som’bitch you ever did meet.

Gene was a short, squat man in a trucker hat. He kept a dirty blond-turning grey beard that could not diminish his big bulbous W.C. Fields nose. He wore a dirty denim jacket over a ratty t-shirt, and matching in filth and fabric were some worn out jeans. Sometimes he wore sneakers, sometimes he wore work boots. His fingers gnarled themselves inward, like an infant trying to make a claw. He hid this physical embarrassment by keeping a lighter in one hand and the cigarette to light in the other.

Gene had this gravelly voice that sounded painful to speak. If this were so, he didn’t show it for he rambled and hollered unceasingly. Gene came up to us kids talking all his shit about owning two of the Waffle House’s windows. He said, and this was backed up by the staff, that he had tossed a patron through one, and on another occasion threw a separate customer through the other. In both incidents Gene claimed to be defending the honor of a Wa-Ho waitress.

It was for two reasons he joined my friends and I. One reason was whatever little girls we had with us. He liked to flirt, and then comment on their breasts and asses. He’d tell them what he would do for them were he a younger man again. Then Gene would grab us boy folk and shake us, letting us know he was just shittin’. He’d tell the girls that we had better treat them good and to give him a call if anything needed correcting. Gene would elbow the hell out of our ribs; he’d give the girls a pinch on the arm.

The second reason he came around us, and this was his primary reason, I’m sure, was the fact that we had cars. Suwannee, a town next door, sold liquor later than Cumming, so ‘round about midnight that’s where Gene hankered to go. I don’t know anyone who was fool enough to give him transport, but he must have been met with some success or he wouldn’t have bothered. He was, however, never too disappointed by our respectful refusals, and this was due to a bottle of MD 20/20 he kept out by the dumpsters.

Mostly I think he just wanted something to do, and someone to do it with. And this was the greatest bond between he and us, between he and everyone else in a smoky Waffle House at three o’clock on Saturday morning.

Gene didn’t always remember what had transpired in previous meetings, but he could call all us boys by our names. The girls were all darlin’.

One night after a bit of storyin’ I told Gene I would write a book about him one day. He went teary eyed, put me in a headlock and introduced me to every redneck he knew in the diner, even those he didn’t know were forced to shake my hand and tell him congratulations.

I had no real intention of writing a book about Gene Kirby. I doubt he ever made it into one of the horrid poems I was cranking out at the time. I had simply meant it as a polite compliment, that his stories were entertaining, that he was a true character worthy of being remembered. But after being danced around by my neck glad handing every stranger occupant I let his notion stand.

As a teenager I longed for a surrogate father. Of course, I would not on my blackest day wish to be Gene’s son, but still, he had qualities that could be honed as my own. He was a man’s man. He was burly and cared not for what opinion others might have of him, and there were some who openly expressed their ill view of Gene. Fuck them by god sonsabitches, he’d say. He stood up to anyone fool enough to trespass against him, and a few who didn’t just to keep in shape. Gene loved to laugh, and loved to get folks laughing with him. At the end of the day, at the end of those long nights, Gene meant no one any harm; he could just get carried away is all.

Over a decade later memories of the old man have dissipated or run together as his own did from one night to the next, but two instances remain vivid to me. The first is of an especially distraught Gene who came in after a long bender with no trademark glee in his leathery, bewhiskered face. He came in hollering that, by god, if it’s over for him, it’s over for every fucking body else. He slumped in beside us, banged on the table removing whatever joy to see him we held, his fists balled tight, forming jagged stumps. Gene did not speak except to say that if they found out it turns out to be cancer then, by god, he’s gonna take everybody else with him. Gene looked around the restaurant like he was about to bulldoze the whole thing, and we kids were just part of it. We were just more tacky wall art, extra waffle irons. We had our coffee and cheese grits in fear and silence, save for Gene’s rumblings.

After that night he came back same as he always had before: stomping and laughing away. We didn’t ask him anything.

More vivid to me is the last time I saw Gene Kirby. I was having breakfast on a Sunday morning with a friend. It was just her and me, and the church crowd until I spied a very different Gene come through the doors. It was remarkable to see him in daylight. His hair was slicked back and real nice, for Gene. He wore a polo shirt, and some khaki pants. His clothes were cheap, but clean; shirt tales tucked in and everything. I got up to say hi. I said, “Hello, Gene.” And extended my hand. He gave me a peculiar look and put his own hand out. Gene’s hand was straight and steady, no gnarly fingers clutching to vice. I asked how he was doing. “Um, fine, I reckon.” His voice not a hint boisterous, but still as gravelly. It then occurred to me that he had no idea who I was. I told him I was glad to see him anyway. I rejoined my friend at the booth, and Gene took a stool at the counter. That was it.

Come on back next time for part 2 where i come upon a book of the dead in: Frosty Mugs and Icy Hearts!

I Dream In Lies

2006-03-11T07:39:00.000-05:00

Two or three nights ago I had a dream that I finished the latest blog I've been working on. It was so real that today I checked the site to see if the two of you who still read this have commented on my new masturbatory effort. It took me a full five minutes of searching around Blogger.com for my "missing" post before I realized it had only been a dream; a sweet, false vision of things never been.

But I, for realsy, am working on a post. You'll like it, too. It's the one where I've returned from Sioux Falls only to find myself being held in a jail house to be questioned by police about my business in a graveyard. And to think, the day would have gone fine were it not for the dead man's son appearing from nowhere.

Here is a brief list of things I saw in Boulder, CO.

2006-01-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

jean-benet ramsey house
mork & mindy house
jesus is magic
a laboratory up on the hill
a tornado in a box
snow and snow shoes (worn and trod in)
a fucking good chocolate shake
that buddhist school founded by ginsberg and company
damnable hippies
a mess of scientists
king kong
a fat girl who held all the keys

Hot Titular Action

2006-01-18T17:26:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of first lines that I did not use in my book.

He hadn't had an outbreak in almost two years, and was considering dating again.

There are things about this world.

Oh shit!

His father, a minister, would never have welcomed this sort in his house.

Your overeating can be controlled.

It sucked so bad to be a thirty year old girl who had just broken up with her idiot boyfriend, and is nervouse about winning the big case, that I just had to go shopping.

God just looking at it hurts.

From the moment he first laid eyes on her he knew he would definitely, definitely holler back.

And their parents said they'd never get anywhere playing these video games.

I was a teenage non-partisan voter.

It doesn't end here.

It wasn't that my father never touched me, it was that he would never touch me where I explicitly told him to.

It didn't seem like a liability on paper.

Everything I know I learned from that colored fella.

It was the best of times, I mean, really, just awesome.

He surmised from the heavy taste of iron that in a couple of days she would become moody and confrontational.

Tune in next time when I give a list of last lines cut from my book. Here's a preview:

Hot dog, indeed; hot dog, indeed.

Have some of this, Mr. Chris Hassiotis

2005-11-05T22:00:00.000-05:00

If any of the two of you that read this recall, I posted a review for "Land Of The Dead". I wish, now, that I had not changed the look of this site as it has done away with all the comments posted. In the comments Chris Hassiotis, a.k.a. The Greek, flamed me for my statement that the film was a knock on "our current situation" in the mid-east. He said, basically, that I made such references up.

Here

we

go.

I just finished watching a show called Icons on G4. It's subject this installment was George A. Romero, who has a video game out now based on the shitty fucking movie of the same name. Chris, in his flaming, demanded that I provide quotes and examples from the movie to prove my hypothesis on the current events commentary offered, however subtle or not, within. Chris, I'll do you one better.

I

love

this.

When asked about the politcs going into his fourth, and god willing final, zombie flick George A. Romero said, and I quote (motherfucker), "I tried to put some post 9/11 references in there." May this bit of news have you stumbling hither and thither on the streets mindlessly calling out for that which you lack, brains.

Flame on,
The Sweet Jody Thrill

Snapshots from the Trailer Park

2005-10-23T23:25:00.000-04:00

The trailer park I grew up in is called Driftwood Circle. It has one paved road that circled around with another paved road cross-sectioning it. It is located on top of a wooded hill that slopes not too steeply down into a cove of Lake Lanier. The trailer park and cove are adjacent to Bald Ridge Marina. A fence, a gate, and a guard separate the two. We lived right on top of that not too steep hill which was the back end of the trailer park. Our trailer was later made into a house. The trailer part was still inside though. It made up the kitchen, a bathroom, and a back room where my stepfather smoked Winstons and drank Budweiser; when he was not working at the welding company he’d worked years before he and I melded paths and has ever since.

My mother worked in banks and businesses-something to do with accounting (and here I am doing something of accounting). I’ve never known what exactly it is she does (or what I do). I still don’t, despite the fact that I hold her dearest above all.

My younger brother was at the age I’ll forever view him as, even though he’s man enough to have gone to jail for defending a lady’s honor. Even though I’ve drank with him in bars and he’s carried my wasted ass home. As a black belt to the umpteenth degree he’s been able, and proven so, to beat that same ass, wasted or not, since he was twelve. That is the age he will remain to me; just this little wholesome kid who loved more than anything to simply just play and run wild with imagination.

We were too many years apart in age to have been the best friends brothers can sometimes be. So when I was merely young he was really young. I do not know what he recalls of our time in the trailer park. He was still really young when we moved out, thank God.

It was not horrible. It was not ideal.

In Sioux Falls, out here in the middle-west, there’s plenty of down time, a lot o’ time to think. Many serial killers come from the deserts and prairies.

My bicycle suffered a flat when I left from work, which turned a twenty-plus minute ride into an hour and a half walk. I pushed it along a paved trail. To my left a slow river makes it way south. The Big Sioux, it’s called, thought it is really just a glorified creek that runs shit water from pastures and well fertilized farms to whatever hick rubes live downstream.

On my right is a golf course. It’s late in the day so it is abandoned, and I am alone on trail without, even, fellow bikers or joggers. October’s crisp chill is on us, but it is not too cold. Yet, everyone acts like it is. I’m not sure why that is. In a few weeks winter will come. Then everyone will act like it isn’t cold at all, and they’ll say that South Dakota hasn’t seen a real winter in years. I know that last’s was not as rough as my first here. Certainly there will be more talk of Global Warming, Gas Prices, Desperate Housewives, and Lost. My friend’s a geneticist. He’s saying that due to pretend cold and lack of honest winter the trees are creeping into the plains. This spells certain doom for prairie dogs, bunnies, and bison; and all those who’ve grown attached to their views having gone unobstructed.

My thoughts moved on as me and my bicycle strolled along side by side. I fantasized some about my future. Where am I going to live in the next year? Back in Georgia? Out in Minneapolis? Will I remain here? I hope not. God, not here. Anywhere but here. I thought about what it will feel like to finish my book, which seems, now, to be an inevitability like a harvest, or an opening night. I wonder if I’ll still like it or once gone from me will I wonder why I bothered to have inside at all, and in the first place? Plenty o’ time for thinking and strolling.

I got my first bike living in that trailer park, got it from Wal-Mart or Kmart, I believe. I walked with it then too. It was on my mama’s advice; to walk it, get used to it. I taught myself to swim when I was three but had not sat on my own bicycle until I was twelve. Before the trailer park me and mama moved around too much to acquire many possessions, and in the early years of Driftwood Circle we were better than many in our neighborhood but not better off. The walking then and the walking now have me recalling what little and all that I can.

There was an old, old couple that lived two trailers down. They had a three legged bitch that was very friendly. The old couple, however, hated each other. Me and a visiting cousin, when we were little, used to crawl under their porch and through some shoddy cement work that was the trailer’s “foundation”. We’d listen to them cuss one another. “I want some pussy, goddamnit!” he’d holler. “Well go down to the marina and have some nigger pussy, cuz you won’t have it from me, by God.” She said. “I don’t want nigger pussy. I want your pussy, goddamnit!” He said. My cousin and I would just lie and listen. One time she pushed him off their stoop. He laid there on his driveway unconscious. We didn’t know what to do, so we left him there with that hateful woman inside and his three legged bitch licking his face.

If there were no family over then the only children to play with that were my age were girls. There were two boys in the neighborhood. One was a couple years older than me, the other was a few more. The latter’s name was Donnie, the former was Jason. Both were friends to me, both were bullies. Donnie showed me his porn stash. Later he broke into my house while my parents were away and put a butterfly knife to me to scare me until I bawled for him to quit. Then we went fishing.

One of the girls was named Alyssa. Her and her older sister would play in the lake and on our dock; my family shared it with our neighbor Lawrence. He was a bachelor and wore Speedos. He had a small bar built into his mobile home. At the lake I could see Alyssa’s and her sister’s nipples through their bathing suits.

Another old couple known as The Wheelers (their last names) kept a nice lawn and a neat home. The park housed a mix of old “decent” retirees and poor white trash whose decency was sporadic at best. As the old folks died off they were replaced by the trash. One time me and the two sisters were walking down to the dock to swim. After a while I was jaded by the nipples. Though I was male I was still a child and mostly just wanted to play and swim. Besides, their little undeveloped breasts were nothing compared to what Donnie had shown to me from his stash. I suppose this was not the case with old man Wheeler. His wife was not present with him on their porch as she usually was. So he told all of us that he liked our little bathing suits we had on. Then he told all of us that he liked what was in them better, and he chuckled. We looked at each other and ran. We jumped into the lake and stayed in the water up to our necks. By the next time we swam the girls had new bathing suits that no vision or wish could penetrate. Just as well.

Jason and I went hunting with our air rifles that looked like M-16s. We also used to play Red Dawn with them. He told me to grab a can that was discarded in the woods and prop it up for target practice. When I crossed in front of him to retrieve it he shot me at point blank range in the back. He laughed and ran off leaving me to cry and sulk in the woods alone. Later he returned and apologized. We played Red Dawn with some kids from the rich neighborhood down the road from our trailer park.

It was by a big kid, who was all bully and no friend, from the rich-kid-neighborhood that gave me the nickname, Taco, because I looked Mexican.

For a week, one summer, me and Alyssa were boyfriend and girlfriend. We held hands for two days straight.

We got a big blow-up alligator for the lake. We named it Zed, after Bobcat Goldwaith’s character in One Crazy Summer, I believe.

We got Nintendo. It was over. I got fat. Then I was called Taco for the amount of which I was presumed able to eat.

I found a cave in the woods. I played there a lot. I couldn’t keep it a secret for very long, so I told Alyssa and her sister. Eventually Jason found out, but he never acted up there. He played the same as any of us.

I was there when Alyssa’s sister had her first period. I was there when Alyssa got hers. I was there, among the many nights, when Jason was beaten by his stepfather. I was having dinner at their home. I don’t remember what transpired but that my memory skips to his mother talking very kindly to me, keeping my attention. I looked behind me, out to their porch, through a sliding glass door. His stepfather had him by the throat and held him half a foot off the ground.

This may not be the same memory but I recall a time when we were in a tent on his lawn. It was nighttime. He was crying and talking about hate. I said nothing. I let him borrow my Optimus Prime. He never gave it back.

Long before that, but not before Donnie and his stash, I was rummaging through our house with a trailer inside looking for my socks that would complete my Little League uniform. My babysitter helped. I played for the Cumming Cubs. I was short stop, and every boy’s father said I was a natural at short stop. The babysitter stopped helping me look. She lay on my parents’ bed and asked me if I knew how to play chicken. She was sixteen; I was in the third grade. I played in our game that night obsessed by this new smell on my hands. My game, however, did not suffer as I never really had to think much about what I was doing, anyway. I was a natural.

Many stories, and many movies, and many songs inspire us to search for that moment when innocence is lost. Pick a memory, any memory.

I was there when Alyssa’s older sister lost her virginity. Not there there. It was lost to one of the bullies that called me Taco, to one of the bullies she used to tell, quit calling me Taco. Alyssa, herself, made a vow to God. I always hoped I’d run into that babysitter again.

These are just a few of many, and even what is displayed herein is incomplete. Alyssa’s older sister married that bully. I wish them well. Alyssa, herself, kept her vow and married out of high school. I wish her well.

Jason grew up to be physically beautiful. I have seen him as an adult and it is amazing. He is truly just beautiful to gaze upon. He has, as of last news, three children with three separate mothers (all equally gorgeous). He neglects them all. He has abandoned them. There is a long scar down his back from where he was stabbed by a ne’er-do-well in the, likewise, company he keeps. Jason was a major player in the “why I am who I am” game. I wish him well.

I have no news of Donnie or the babysitter who both let me know that I am to be a heterosexual, who both taught me what it means to be a man and a child, but did not make me one or the other. They taught me, as well, to masturbate. You bet I wish them well.

The old folks whom I’ve recalled are all dead and in such a state, for good or ill, that all my well wishing would only fall impotent and short of reach. But still.

Now I walk my bicycle with a small creak in my knees that was not there when I first held my bicycle to stroll along, and I give this shit-I’m-thinking-about to the shit of the river that flows southward beside me. And to the shit of the internet that, like the river, flows from us to trickle onward and away to those unsuspecting rubes that happen upon it downstream. And as much as I would piss in that stream I would fashion an origami boat with all hope and wonder for all the unknown that is onward and away from me. Be well.

Say It With A Cookie

2005-09-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

There has never been a big “to do” over my birthday. Because of Labor Day I could never have parties. Everyone I knew from school would be out of town. We a had a few parties, I suppose, but they were attended by cousins and other family members; and a couple of other trailer park kids who, like my family, couldn’t afford no fancy three day excursion. I don’t remember when but it got started that my mama would get cookie cakes for me and my brother, his birthday is later in the month. This went on for years and I’ve since missed them. Mama forgets. Not because she’s forgetful, but that birthdays aren’t a big deal in my family. We all still have to ask each other our ages.

So, anyway, I’m on the phone with mama a few nights ago and she’s asking me about the book. As much as I want to I don’t lie. I tell her it’s about drugs and sex and corpses. I tell her about big black transvestites and dirty old men who’ll keep all kinds of company. I tell her it’s based on my own experiences in Atlanta. I don’t tell her these things like I’m proud or ashamed. I just tell her. She seems interested. My mama is a sweetheart. She has had hard times and so is not naïve, nor is she in any way cynical. It’s amazing I’m her child. She listens and makes comments that lead me to believe it is not motherly duty that keeps her from gasping and fainting and disowning me. So I am rewarded and not shunned for my honesty. I believe that she owns up to me as her son because I own up to myself, and that’s as perfect as a child can be, I suppose. Before we hang up she tells me to look for something in the mail. Something small, nothing big; for my birthday.

I forget about it; the present and my birthday, and would have forgotten about the day all week if the Lady Windham hadn’t called on Saturday the 3rd to wish me happy birthday. I tell her she’s wrong and I scold her. My b-day is Wed. the 7th, leave me alone, stop calling. She calls again the next day to wish the same. Her watch is busted and she won’t do anything about it. I say fine, thank you; happy birthday to you too.

The day before my b-day there is a box in front of my apartment door. I snatch it up and in snatching snag a glimpse of the sender. I just see the word cookie, and I’m immediately thrilled. I’m a 28 year old grown man and thrilled near to tears about getting a cookie cake. I take it to my office and brush aside a short story I’m working on when I take a break from working on the book, of which I’ll be sharing on this site. I mean the short story and not the book. It’s about a girl with green eyes and the end of the world. I open up the box and it is not a cookie cake. It is something else, and it is much better.

It started long, long ago. There were many kids in our family. Either all my cousins were over at my house or we were all at some other aunt’s house. We were wild, dirty yard apes and hard to keep track of individually. Whoever was in charge was happy enough to count the same number of heads in each check up to see if anyone was bruised and squalling yet. I had gotten Superman underoos as a present, I think. I may have just bawled and hollered for them. This particular occasion we were all being herded into a car for an older cousin’s softball game. Here’s the thing. I had cowboy boots I wore with the underoos. For those uninitiated underoos for Superman came with briefs (red with yellow band), t-shirt (blue with the yellow, red S insignia), and a little red cape that tied around the neck. I had curly black hair, still do. After donning my attire I would take mama’s hair products and mousse my hair down, pull one curl down over my forehead. The tag was sewn into the back of the band on the briefs, on the inside. This made a square of the fabric a little thicker than the rest of the band and I mistook it to be the belt buckle of Superman’s yellow belt. So, I wore them backwards. Since the smaller front was now in back it gave the effect of wearing thong underwear. And cowboy boots.

So it was that I went unnoticed as me and my cousins were corralled into the car, and I was in the back-back by myself. The number of heads added up and we were off. We arrived at the ball park and as soon as the car was stopped, possibly a moment or two before, we all lit out to go play, wherever. I was not seen all day. Until the ninth inning, when my cousin’s team was down three runs with two outs, bases loaded, and she was up to bat (baseball clichés added for theatrical effect). It would take a miracle to save them now, when, look! Up in left field! It’s…. some kid in brightly colored thong and cape with cowboy boots and he’s holding his arms out in front as he whooshes across the outfield and jumps the right field fence and storms into the woods. No one remembers the outcome of the game. They just remember me, and though I don’t remember it, I’m not allowed to forget.

It wasn’t a cookie cake my mama had sent me. It was a basket of cookies. Twelve shortbread cookies, big as the palm of my hand. They are shaped in the likeness of Superman from behind. There’s a little head of black hair, then a bell shape for the cape and the emblem. Two little blue legs poke out the bottom, and red squares for feet. I like the idea that I don’t remember it and have had the story recounted to me time and time over. In a way it feels like I was Superman in a previous life, which gives me a feeling of potential. I saved one cookie for the Lady Windham, and one more I keep on my desk in my office. As a birthday present it serves as both a tasty treat and an overwhelming sentiment from my mama reminding me that I’m still her little Jody. The one I keep is not just a memento to remind me of my 28th birthday, like people keep movie ticket from first dates and whatnot. I hate those kinds of keepsakes. The memory is better than the token, and when forgotten the “story of” is even better. I keep this one as a symbol, so when I look up from writing I see Superman with his back to me, and am reminded of what it is I’m chasing. It doesn’t tell me that I am now 28, or that I used to be a kid. Why would I need a reminder of that? It tells me of my past, solidifies this moment, and keeps me hopeful in the face of my future. What I love about it, and am moved the most by is that it is just a cookie. It’s mine, and you all will have to get your own.

For Realsy

2005-08-23T22:26:00.000-04:00

This is a dream I had and I dedicate it to Kissyfur Hassiotis.

the other night i dreamt that the town was being overrun with zombies, but it was like the umpteenth million time, and all the citizens were pretty annoyed at having to lose another weekend to the drudgery of zombie slaying. we were all in a warehouse looking over guns and ammo. it wasn't a big deal-all the free arms. frankly, we'd rather pay for them if it meant a normal weekend. the older folks were telling young'uns to aim for the head and not get too close. the mayor gave a psa asking in the case of zombie bite that victims do themselves in so that this doesn't have to get dragged out and maybe we could salvage our sunday. so after gathering our arms and massing on the street we waited while the zombie hords crested the avenue. it took forever, because zombies take forever. when we saw them we collectively sighed and rolled our eyes, then opened fire. when it was over, and without incident, i had coffee with essayist Sarah Vowell. true story; well, true story about a dream i had.

Sweet Tea in Sweet Climes

2005-07-31T12:05:00.000-04:00

This was taken from a much larger piece. I restored it to its original nonfiction root. The names have been restored to reveal the guilty. I chose this because I never thought of myself as a nostalgic person. The more I write the more I find that's not true. Not even a little bit. What follows is a represention of many nice Georgia moments. I apologize for offering up so little after a long time. I've been busy.

Jody

Sweet Tea in Sweet Climes

Something, actually two things, a person should know about the South: Sweet-Tea, listen up yanks and Midwesterners, is made with store bought ready-to-go bags of commercial tea grounds, usually Lipton’s. The sugar is added, yanks, Midwesterners, hold on to your hats, at the just off the boil stage to infuse and homogenize through out the entire brew. It’s not hard chemistry. The only way a person can personalize their tea is to either increase or decrease the amount of sugar, or one can add a flavored tea bag, usually mint. I prefer an orange flavor. Some will say sun brewed tea tastes better, but only because they feel their effort and patience must be rewarded (The Emperor’s Sweet Tea, if you will). Whatever difference they purport would be made moot anyway by the sugar.

Sweet Tea is as popular as water in the South, but held in only minutely better regard. The only people who really care whether or not a home or establishment has or has not sweet iced tea are Northern tourists and Southern geriatrics; and even then it’s not for tradition but senility.

Having brought that up, one should know that despite all just written there are people who by no teaching, nor trick make exceedingly tasty sweet tea; sweet tea so refreshing and delicious that it gives those who drink it a Tolkien feeling of wellness and reinvigoration. These people are touched, blessed, and, indeed, envied. It is of phenomena, and therefore unexplainable. My ex-roommate from Atlanta, Seth Campbell, was such a person. The Campbells, all, are such people. Myself and others have tried to call this magic into our own brew, and with no success. I have watched Seth and his family many times with their process. No special tea bags. No special amount of sugar, and same tap water as anyone else. I have even made sweet tea at Seth’s family home, with their ingredients and measurements, yet yielded nothing more magical than a regular old glass of sweet that I’ve had every day since come down. While living with me in Atlanta he was given by his family an iced tea machine! Sacrilegious! But I’ll be damned if he didn’t draw forth that sweet, delectable nectar; touched blessed and able to heal even God’s lowliest.

The second thing a person should know of the South is that there are places and times where the heat and humidity do not penetrate. They are random and culled by none. When you find yourself there and then you are having a good day, for such are lazy days of respite; not the same as the lazy August days where to think is to sweat profusely. These days are made up of good company, fine conversation, and the miracle of iced sweet tea where the glass sweats, yet the ice does not melt.

It is not that heat or humidity are absent from this blissful happening, but still omnipresent as ever, only without duty. One praises it to make it stay and never leave, one also praises to appreciate the here and now, because it will end; and at its end no quality of conversation, ease of friendship, or blessed iced brew with sugar sweet will do to win one favor; Summer’s rare grace.

Oddly enough this occurred at the Seth’s homestead frequent enough to say in a relative sense that it happened most often there. We’d sit with our glasses of his iced tea on his family’s back porch. There home was off Dr. Bramblett Road, set back into the woods. Where the house sat was a natural clearing. His parents ran several greenhouses; also on the property and kept their modest yard in palatial splendor. The sun somehow stayed behind cloud. The forest surrounding was allowed to breathe out its store of cool breeze and not be strangled by ray and moisture. Their tea was plentiful, the ice un-melting. We mixed a little whiskey, which is seraphic by design, from a jug. We’d talk and not talk. We’d listen and not listen to Jazz Classics on NPR. I’d close my eyes tilt my head upward as though I were sunning myself in shade. The tea, the clearing, and the whiskey all blessed. Thus we were thricely so. Fucking-A, it was nice out there!

The Dead Are Trying My Patience

2005-06-27T12:38:00.000-04:00

The Dead Are Trying My Patience
my review of Land Of The Dead

George A. Romero’s twilight opus, Land Of The Dead, is a subtle allegory on the current situation involving the Middle East. It revolves around a simple gas station attendant, which could be discerned as Iraq, but with a minority face that one could relate to and still be patriotic; he’s a black man who longs to understand this new world around him and his lot in it. The setting is a small, quiet neighborhood populated by other content to be simple folk that is quickly interrupted by well armed white men who’ve come to raid their resources for a near by city of glutton, paranoia, and vice. The invading city then sells this booty to it’s people at an over inflated price just so that they can maintain the consumer lives they were accustomed to since before the “unpleasantness” happened. The black gas station attendant, who is not given a name, then proceeds to lead his people to overthrow the corrupt powers that be.

Meanwhile two enforcement officials in charge of said raid are also at odds with how things are working and where they fit in. The first we see questioning his motives is Cholo (John Leguizamo), an Hispanic smack talker, who believed that what he was doing was earning him a position amongst the social elite, that he was working for a greater good for himself and his comrades. Once denied his piece of the pie by the very lord, Mr. Kaufman played by a confused Dennis Hopper, he was trying to keep in power and thusly restricted from movin’ on up said Hispanic steals his governments most dangerous weapon and holds the city ransom.

Enter the star of the film, Some Whiteguy, played by some white guy. Just kidding the hero’s name is Riley and he’s played by Simon Baker who actually is just a white guy on and off screen. He’s called in to both thwart Cholo and squash the simple gas station attendant’s uprising when all he really wants to do is go to Canada and be left alone. What ensues is some of the most clever and engaging dialogue and character interaction mixed with elaborate and truly believable action on epic set pieces the silver screen has ever seen.

Psych! That’s not what it’s about. Well, in a way it is. There are references to the War, but, really; really, really it’s an unimpressive zombie flick. That black gas station attendant is a zombie, he’s dead. The movie’s premise is that Romero’s earlier movies are true and in real time. We now live in an alternate present where zombies have proliferated until there are only a few cities in the world that are safe and secure anymore. The living raid towns overrun by the walking dead for food and medical supplies. That is until the station attendant figures out that with just a few vague grunts he can lead other undead to sack a corrupt (which I assume has to be coincidental) city and feed on the non-dead’s flesh. John Leguizamo lends the only perceivable personality to the film, and his character is only there to steal the city’s super weapon, an A-Team rigged RV that shoots pretty fireworks. That’s not a joke. Sadly, he even out acts Dennis Hopper who is basically some crotchety lord what hides out in a tower. The rest of the cast it just a hodge-podge of stereotypical characters, which is pretty much typical of horror and most other mainstream genres.

On that point: It should be noted since so much regard is paid to Romero’s move to have a black man in the lead in the original Night Of The Living Dead at a time when that was more than a big deal, that the two most prominent black men in the movie are one: the “leader” gas station attendant zombie whose first order of business once new found cognition sets in is to pick up a gun and start ending innocent lives. The second is Mr. Kaufman’s man-servant. Yep, man-servant, even dressed as a maitre d’ in a white jacket and black bow tie. Though he is not killed, or at least we don’t see it, he does run off “Amos and Andy” style from his master at the threat of boogins overtaking the two.

As for Riley, our hero, like I said, all he really wants is to go to Canada, suck down some Molson and tell ‘em all to go to hell. There’s even a moment where he has the chance to take out some zombies and to do so would save many innocent lives, but, instead, and this where the movie finds it’s heart, looks in the eyes of the mindless dead and tells his squad of rogues to back down and do nothing, because “They’re looking for a place to go, same as us.”

Despite some pretty good special effects and plenty of gore, ultimately the movie blends in with the rest of the overcrowded and run of the mill of the genre Romero helped to create. The biggest problem is Romero doesn’t know how to top himself. Already the idea of dead walking requires so much suspension of disbelief that to ask someone to go along with zombies organizing and rebelling using tactical goals to overcome a corrupt system is asking too much. And because why? So they and their zombie children have a safe place to play and meander? Were the movie longer would they eventually build schools and stores, houses of worship? Would they begin producing artists and standup comedians whose biting social commentary tell how it is from the undead perspective (now normal livin’ folks walk like dis, while us zombies be walkin’ dis way)? Would that gas station attendant have lead his “people” to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and give what would be his famous “I have a Zombie dream” speech?

Assumedly, the whole idea of making stupid zombies less stupid would be to create a better platform to terrorize movie goers, yet throughout the film we are positioned to sympathize with the flesh eating monsters. It’s as though the audience is supposed to look on with stern face and quiet tears and reason why we can’t just let them feed off human flesh in peace. It’s what I want for my children.

In short I didn’t like the movie. Be that as it may there is one redeeming quality and it is very subtle and doesn’t involve Iraq, nor does it make better the movie. Actually, I’ve already stated why it made the movie bad. And though it didn’t make me like the movie one iota better it did make me respect the creator. George A. Romero gave birth and life to the zombie flick. Zombies are what made him and why we horror lovers revere him. If he sees fit in his golden years to pay a little of that reverence back to his creation by giving the dead a soul, a flicker of light behind their eyes to look back in his, well, what can I say, but, more power to him. I just hope he doesn’t make another one.

This is Jody Thrill and I’ll see you at the movies.

That name is only funny if you know my middle name is Hill, and even then its pushing it.

Love Will Keep Us Together

2005-06-15T23:02:00.000-04:00

None of this had occurred to me until after the divorce, until I guesstimated the length of their marriage and put it next to my younger half-brother’s age. Twenty years. It then dawned on me that my mother’s first marriage to my biological father was three years long. I was three at the time of that divorce.

I know that I’m not the reason my mother and father got together. They met in a park. I had nothing to do with it. I’m not the reason they got divorced either. He was a liar and abusive. He would run out for weeks and come with no explanations or apologies. I think I’m just the reason they got married.

This one, this entry, it is not catharsis. It is not part of the healing process that can be writing. I’m not hurt, I’m fine. I’m just disappointed. I don’t bring this up because I want someone to feel sorry for me, or for us. I’m not reaching out. I’m making a point.

In ways I may be the reason she and my stepfather got together in the first place. I don’t care how modern times were or are, a single mother who wants everything for her child is looking for a father. They met in high school years and years prior. I don’t think they kept in touch, but just ran into each other. Mama and I were couch surfing. He put us up for a while, which turned into twenty years.

When you come out of a bad relationship you tend to go for the opposite-type person on next go ‘round. This is called the overcorrection and it can put you in as much danger, if not more, than what you meant to avert.

My stepfather owned his home, kept a steady job (he’s had the same job for as long as I’ve known him), and he was quite content with his station in life. He never yelled, he never laid a hand on her or me. Then mama got pregnant. I may have been the reason they tried dating but my brother was the reason they got married.

Two things you should know: My mama isn’t one to just roll over and accept whatever as her lot in life. In moments of extreme displeasure I’ve seen her silence a restaurant full of people, staff included. I’ve seen her put fear in the hearts of two criminals even as they were safely locked away from her behind bars. Mama could be a force of righteousness; you’d do well not to come between her and her cubs, you’d do very well, indeed, to never tell her she’s wrong when you damn well know that’s not true. I’m just saying. The second thing is this. My stepfather was not a bad man to her or I, just the wrong man. Nothing is no one’s fault. This isn’t the Lifetime Channel. It’s more complicated than that.

My stepfather was content where he was, right where he was. He never came with us to the movies, or to museums and libraries; plays and orchestras. Mama’s world, or rather the world she wanted for her boys, was huge. That’s a good thing. My stepfather’s world was smaller, pragmatic, based on stability more than ambition or desire. This is not a bad thing. Mama was raised poor; my stepfather was raised dirt poor. For what he had he considered himself successful. He has every right to. I’ve seen his family, and were it not for he I couldn’t imagine a decent person to spring from such a trashy, ignorant well.

Just as my father was no man for my mama, my stepfather was no husband to her; not for the goer that she was. I remember they kissed once. The only time they went out on “dates” was on Valentine’s Day. Even then it was just dinner, in town, then home, then TV. Count it, folks. Two decades of marriage equals twenty dates. Put it this way, next month you and your boyfriend or girlfriend go out to dinner every night from the 1st to the 20th, then never again for twenty years. Oh, and your only aloud to kiss once. Oh, and you can only have sex a handful of times at the beginning. Do this and we’ll talk. They kept separate bedrooms for most of mine and my brother’s lives. She said it was because he snored too loud. This wasn’t far fetched. He snored like giants of old. But then you think about it, mama could sleep through tornados.

He was no father to me. This is fine. It really is. I was old enough to know that I didn’t have one. And from what I understood when you don’t have a daddy then you don’t have a daddy. You can’t just sprinkle magic dust on someone and poof they gave birth to you, poof you now share blood and blood bonds. He was good to me, though. We liked each other and we still do.

I bring this up only to comment more on the marriage. He was, and is a father to my brother. He took him to baseball games, basketball games. He taught him home repair, car repair. I still can’t drive stick; I’m a 27 year old man. To my mother’s dismay he always looked at my brother as his and I hers. Like towels or bathrobes.

It was in this time I began to bully my brother. To be frank it was outright physical abuse. I remember throwing him down stairs. I remember picking him up by his throat. I poured boiling water on his back. Everyone thought I hated him. Mama thought I was jealous and acting out. You know, because maybe I wanted a father; you know, because of the towel thing.

This isn’t confession. I’m going somewhere.

I regret the abuse. I didn’t hate him, I loved him. I wasn’t jealous. It had never even crossed my mind. What I was was fat and dark skinned. What was crossing my mind was that at school and in the neighborhood everyone was calling me Taco, The Fat Mexican. I was getting chased through woods on bicycles. I was getting rolled down hills. I was getting my ass beat by boys much older and bigger than I could hope to overcome. What was really going on was that I began snapping at the only thing smaller than me, which was my baby brother who I loved and did not hate. This is important.

Do this. Tally up her time with my father and the couple years of wondering around trying to find a home for herself and her son. Add that to her time with my stepfather. It’s over twenty-five years of a man present, right there, but no love in sight. Not the kind we’re talking about. Not the kind with embrace, passion or quirkiness. Not the kind that teaches you to forgive your partner’s differences. Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century.

I know it’s not his fault, but if it weren’t for my brother you could knock twenty years off that passionless sentence. Take me out of the picture and she gets the whole shebang back: youth, life, and a better chance at a real lover who dispenses real love. I’m just speculating, I know. I say this because the idea, the chance to knock off some of those years had come and gone.

Here’s the hard part. Here’s the point.

Since ultimately my mother did divorce my stepfather, my brother’s father, couldn’t she have come to this conclusion much sooner? I mean she is intelligent; she’s not one to roll over and accept whatever as her lot. The answer: yes. Thirteen years sooner, actually. We went out for dinner in Roswell one Saturday. It’s a couple towns away from where we live. It was just her and me. On the way she took the long route, the scenic route through neighborhoods and apartment complexes. I was twelve. We ate and she kept asking if I liked it around there. Sure, I said. She said maybe we could find an apartment. I felt something was up. “All four of us in an apartment?” I asked. “No.” She said. “Just me, you and [my brother].” Despite all implications of this dialogue she was, for lack of a better word, enthused. She was cautious to be sure, but enthused. All I could think of was my brother who I loved and did not hate. “What about [my brother]?” Was all I said in response.

She knew what I meant. He had it great, better than any of us. He was seven and had his mama, and his daddy who both loved him very much. He had me. He had us all under one roof, in the same home. It would have killed him and that would have killed me. In that moment at some restaurant in Roswell, GA. I only thought of his little heart. I could not bear it to burst as I, and mama, knew it would and eventually did. Her eyes glossed a bit, and her shoulders fell. She looked at me, picked them back up, and smiled. “It was just a thought.” She said.

We went home, picked up my little brother; Saturday was movie day. I think we saw “Wildcats” with Goldie Hawn. My brother asked his father if he wanted to come with. My stepfather said no, of course, but he told him to have a good time. Mama bought us candy and cokes. Thirteen more years.

My point is this: love can lock as much as it can embrace; punish as much as please. It is as much the nail in your foot as the light of your life. There is no blues song for this. There is no reality show depicting this kind of family as predominant as it is. Love, the idea—the feeling, is protean and ungraspable. We sit alone or with some new lover and think to ourselves or each other, dreamy eyed, of all great notions we’ll embark on in the name of love. But in the end you can’t imagine what all you’ll have done for it, by it, because of it. And, furthermore, what it will have done to you. I don’t mean to preach. I’m just saying.

Tent Revival

2005-05-26T14:53:00.000-04:00

This month is nearly over and I've very little to offer. I have been working on the book mostly and kept thinking that something would arise and be worth mentioning. Nothing new has come. It's just the same ol' same old. Rent, bills, typeing, internet porn, TV shows on DVD.

I'm not sure if I've written of this or not, but when the book is complete I'll be making my return to the Dirty South. Just like that. On my trek up here to South Dakota I envisioned my leaving as a great launch into the unknown; heavier in wisdom and lighter in spirit, and with much fanfare and rejoicing by all. It will not go this way and I do not care. I will be happy to have just finished a book and get on with it all, whatever that may be. And I am not saddened by a lack of fanfare as it seems the book's completion will be its own reward. I don't know anyone who's written a novel; good or bad, and as I go through the process of one's creation my respect for anyone who has taken on such a task grows. I've worked in two bookstores, no one's reading. At least, no one's reading anything we're writing. Fic/Lit is on very few people's reading lists these days. I know full well that my book good or bad, will likely not see the light of day, and even then would have a snowball's chance in hell at any monetary success. It would also be distasteful, and presumptuous, to say that this is for those few who are wise and enlightened enough seek soul stirring prose and enrichment; or that this is for the ages and that some future generation will hale this author unkown in his own time. Who is it I seek to enrich, then; to whom is it I reach outward for? I'm not writing a diary to be kept under my pillow or locked away in some hidey-hole. I have an audience in mind. I guess it would do to say I speak to all and I speak to no one.

So, the book is very much like this blog. Which I would say is very much like the Happy Harry Hard On in "Pump Up The Volume". Are you out there? Are you listening? It is catharsis. It is masturbation. It is an attempt to reach out to let anyone I find know they are not alone, and it is a call to anyone who finds me to let me know that I am not alone. This is all just my message in a bottle, my voice on an open frequency. This is just me in third grade when we were made to write our names and addresses on postcards, tie them to a ballon and set them adrift. It is the Zen plane. It is solus tudin. It is the carapice in which I hide, and it my deliverance. Within, and without. But some one said it best (as someone else always has), and this month I will leave you (whoever you are) with a quote.

So, until next time, this Jody Callahan saying eat your cereal with a fork and do your homework in the dark.

Excerpt from “In the Hand of Dante”
By Nick Tosches

“And, yes, I came to believe ever more deeply, and with ever greater thanks, that God had spared me – for something. I came to believe that God kept me alive to deliver forth all that I could; that He had kept me alive to surrender myself as a vessel, that I might let flow to others, through my [work], the gift that I had received: the gift of the awareness of the immense blessing of the every moment and the every breath that we are given; the gift of the awareness that we are the destroyers of our own lives, the breakers of our own hearts; that freedom lies only in the absolute honesty that fear strangulates within us; that all the pretty pills and the fraud and whoredom of psychotherapy and mass-market spirituality in this world are as nothing compared to the ancient words of the Gospel of Thomas—‘If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you’—and these words are all of truth and wisdom that need be known.
…I had been kept alive for this; to make what I could, and thus be free, in fidelity and in gratitude and in dignity.”

A first stab at my (legendary unwritten) book.

2005-04-20T00:07:00.000-04:00

What follows is a first draft copy (meaning subject/likely to change a million and one times) of the introduction to the book I'm writing. It is not my intention to publish the whole thing in a blog, but I've nothing else to post here as all my writing time is taken up with it. Since the summer is coming up I thought those familiar with this time of year in GA may appreciate it, or anyone victim to heat and humidity. And to those who live in Sioux Falls and want to tell me how it can get so humid in this midwestern town, that's cute now go fuck yourself.

Also, I had someone read this and thought I was gay bashing. The account that follows is very true; the only part of my book that actually happened, but have tried in my way, however faultering, to make it clear it was the heat that fueled my irrationality, not sexual preference, without having to do some kind of P.C. re-write for television where I gotta spell the fucking thing out, hug one of those absurdly outrageous fags from "Queer Eye" to violin music while both of us are hugged and kissed on the forehead by Danny Tanner from "Full House". That would be gay.

Enjoy.

Introduction to Sky-blue Sky

Jesus Christ, that autumnal breeze. Or is it autumnal scent? Whichever it has been the sole bane in my endeavor to write, to capture anything on the page. Faint as a dead saint’s whisper it comes in the dog days of August when I am at the end of my rope, when its time to punch the queer in the back of his head at some burrito joint for taking too long, talking to his boyfriend about every god damned thing on the menu, and the only reason I’m here is because, I swear to God, I thought there was air conditioning. The heat and humidity get into your skin. A few steps outside and there is no difference between yourself and the swelter. There are two standing fans oscillating at each entrance. They both turn to me as I make a step towards the fag and ball up my fist, they whisper to me. I turn around and walk out. It’s too hot for eating burritos.

That’s what summer is like in Atlanta. It’s not so much the heat as it is so much fucking heat; and enough humidity to swim to work. This is when people lose it in rush hour traffic. This is when fights break out for seemingly no reason. The homeless and elderly start to turn up dead. Even the most stalwart of citizens curse the South and grumble in their minds, two more years, I swear, and I’m gone. The jokes and comradeship over the weather that bring passing strangers together were worn out and forgotten by the end of July.

It is not the endurance test that romantics fantasize about when dreaming of conquering the elements. It is simply what must pass, and no patience or other virtue will avail you cooler disposition; lighter mood. You burn. We all burn. Summer in the South is its own plane of existence; harsh and omnipresent. Benign to opinion and attitude the only way to get through it is to find cover, wait it out, or flee.

Then, Jesus Christ, that autumnal breeze. Or maybe it is scent, as any wind can offer relief, albeit a relative relief. I call it a wind, but… I felt, or I smelled it, outside the burrito stand among all that congestion on Monroe Drive. It calms me; I’m sorry for calling that guy a queer, or thinking it anyway. Was I really going to hit him? It’s just a moment of clarity before I go back under, but in that moment the feeling is both within and without and its conveyance is at the tip of my tongue. Its right fucking there and then is simply, without trace, fucking gone. And I can not name it. It is unnamable.

It came, again, later while I was alone on a midnight walk in my Midtown neighborhood. All by myself with my walkman trying to figure out how I’m to tell my tales, terrified that when I get home, yet again, there will be no voice, and that unnamable wind, or is it ungraspable feeling, comes. I do know what it is not. It is not the breaking point, where the heat begins to ease out of our lives, and the humidity drops us from its clutch. It’s the smell of dead leaves, I think, though around me they still thrive. A sense of dead leaves?

On this wind is the knowing that the leaves will change and die and give the sweet odor of their decay to air, and the sleepless nights in sweat soaked beds, and the days of searching for shelter will be over. It is not the ending or beginning, but the mention of ending and beginning. A breeze from the future? It’s fleeting, and I’m only aware of it in those dog days when it takes me by surprise. It is dead leaves, I know it. Jesus, but there is nothing physical to it. I can not give it an accurate account. By the time I get back home to my computer it is gone and all I have left of it, especially now that I am three years gone from Atlanta, is what feels like the shabby mis-memory of nostalgia, or the remnants of a vivid dream destroyed in contemplation by lunch time. It’s all around in autumn, of course, and I can describe autumn, but what happens in August is not autumn, obviously. Autumn impending?

Forget it. To hell with it. Perhaps there is no actual wind of portent. It does not blow nor has ever blown except for in my own mind in its last scrape to survive the mental imposition of a Georgia summer, and it is only my biological clock winding down for the fall it knows is inevitable. Whatever it is it’s of no use to me if I can not describe it, and I hereby, finally, give up. I release now what I was never able to capture. And I will now consider myself in a state gladness to spite it.

Addiction and Lies: How they effect us at work and at play.

2005-03-16T19:22:00.000-05:00

dedicated to Tink who says that she still reads these

It didn’t help mine and my manager’s relationship much that I didn’t fall asleep until four in the morning only to over sleep three hours past clock-in time with a splitting headache from all that generic Nyquil shit I take to get to sleep these days. I’ve gotten used to the taste, like Jaeger, but there is much I prefer in its stead. Usually two to three shots and I’m out and shut of this world within thirty minutes. It just so happens that on this night I “accidentally” (meaning ignorant of, but not unconscious of the effects) drank too much coffee in the evening. The result was lifeless limbs, but a heart that could fuel a racing horse, and a very flimsy and vague state of sleep, but the dreams were vivid.

Somewhere that night I had been tapped by the uppers to assassinate the head vampire who hangs out in a discothèque located inside of a popular shopping mall. He bears a distinct resemblance to Ron Perlman, whom I loathe in real life. Except for Hellboy. And, yes, except for City of Lost Children. So I made it to the club and somehow manage myself through the doors and armed guards with a large sniper rifle unconcealed and in hand. I’m about to make my move when Elektra (Elektra from the comic book [which I’ve never read] not Elektra from the movie [which I did see, once]) shows up just in my peripheral at my immediate left. And I know the tasty bitch is here to kill me. No sooner does this thought cross my mind does a blade slide into my rib cage and pierce my lung. I stumble and fall over a railing onto the first level of the mall. With a drunkard’s bumbling luck I manage to not further harm myself, but I’m still dying and shock is well set in. My mission becomes confused; I’m supposed to fire this rifle, someone other than myself is supposed to die. In lost and idiot duty I fire at random persons in the mall. Every shot fired was a head shot. I took down several as the crowds panicked. Some people attempt to take me down from behind to unarm and subdue me. I still pull off a few successful shots before I’m incapacitated. This is when I wake up three hours late. I am comforted in my long morning leak with the thought that in a tight spot I’m probably pretty handy with a rifle. This makes me think that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Red Dawn, and that makes me wonder what the name of that movie was with Chuck Norris where Russian terrorists were planning an attack on U.S. soil. I think Rutger Hauer was in it as the lead bad guy. Fuck, Blind Fury was an awesome movie. That’s the one where Rutger Hauer was this dude who lost his sight in some jungle war and was taken in by some villagers who taught him to be a blind samurai of sorts. You could throw a coconut at him and he’d slice it in half in mid air with a katana drawn from his walking cane. Have you seen it? All of this train of thought is just to avoid the inescapable. I’m going to have to explain my lateness, and somehow get my boss to agree to a three day leave of absence the following week.

On the way to the office I decide what is appropriate to say, how much I should leave out. I don’t imagine my humorless cunt of a boss would want an entire sob story. I imagined she would only want to hear how this affects my performance and company stats. This angers me. Everything about the woman unnerves me. She thinks she’s so hot with her boob job and corporate pony tail. She always smells like cigarette smoke and body spray. She has a little black in her gums like a dog, and large teeth. She had her stomach stapled; apparently she used to be fat, and eats only junk food. What infuriates me most is her ass. It’s the flattest, most unshapely thing I’ve ever seen; it’s so indicative of what she is: void and want of substance. I know and hate that just about every man in the office would be more than happy to fuck her. I’d fuck her, too, I guess. But I’d treat her like shit the whole time. Enough. I don’t want to think of that.

I show up, she’s walking around the floor helping someone find an errant wedding ring. When she sees me she sours an already soured face. Before she exposes her black gums and horse teeth to address me I say, “I need to speak to you.” And I pull her into an empty office. This move catches her off guard. I tell her I need her help. I hated saying this. I hated needing her good grace. I explain to her that I had just learned the day before that a family member was found dead. My 1st cousin. He had been an addict most of his adult life. My boss loosens and actually seems concerned. I don’t know why I’d assume someone would assume that one would lie about such things, but I wouldn’t put it past her to assume the worst in anyone that is as visibly unimpressed by her as I am. She’s just that kind of bitch, man. She actually and sincerely inquires about what’s going on. She was happy to arrange my schedule so that I could have the three days I needed off, which enabled me attend my cousin’s funeral.

My cousin’s sad tale is this: He was the youngest in a family whose would-be eldest was struck and killed by a truck at the age of three. My cousin was characterized in his childhood as the most fearless of us; the one whom it took little coaxing to try anything. He had always been in and out of petty troubles and scraps around the school yard a little more than you and I, perhaps, but nothing none of us didn’t get ourselves involved in at one time or another. Baseball seemed to have anchored his lawlessness in early high school. That is until sliding grades got him kicked off the team. Around this time he’d picked up chewing tobacco and drinking on weekends. He wound up in at least one fight a week; mostly spawned from cloudy disputes at teenage parties. Honestly, nothing out of the ordinary in that time, and in that town.

His parents divorced, marking where the dark turned darker in the young man, when his father was caught by a private investigator his mom had hired in the throws of love or something similar with another woman. I saw one of the photographs taken by the Seamus. My cousin’s father, my uncle, looked happy carrying this woman across a parking lot. I had always known the guy to be a surly ineffectual man.

My cousin found solace and a good shot at redemption in a young girl named Crystal, who I’ll name outright as the only true innocent in this tale and on whom no mortal judgment shall pass. Crystal was the good hearted sort, a devout Christian who could cross any line and befriend even the most wayward and unruly of characters that are usually avoided by church-going folk. She was even a friend of mine.

It is my understanding that their friendship was solid, that only she could control him when drunk or otherwise fucked up. And my cousin was someone who by even the toughest among and most willing among us could not be subdued. He was part Iron Mike and part Raging Bull. He may not have won every fight he was in, but took the best of anyone: friend or foe. Crystal was the only one whom he revered. He had tried to become more than friends with her on a few occasions, but was unable. She loved her friends; she loved her family and church. She loved homework and puppy dogs and that was all. He seemed to suffer no frustration over this, proving, to me anyway, that his affection was not born of teenage lust, but of some other force unknown to me as I had never before or since seen a lion and a Christian that did not fight. And so the lion slept beside the lamb. That is until the little lamb was knocked into oncoming traffic by the Hand of God at an intersection one day. Crystal, her own cousin, and baby sister were killed in a head on collision. Now she slumbers in pastures far from my cousin’s reach. Hereafter began the coke, and the steroids, the drinking, and the mugging.

I know of two trips to jail, and at least a couple court appointed stays in rehab. During some sober moment, and this is far past high school days, he had fallen in love with and married a cute little girl who bore more than a passing resemblance to Crystal in body and kindness. It should be said that for the most part my cousin was a functional addict. He maintained jobs and amongst family and most friends was congenial and very well humored. Though the steroids gave him an unnatural brawn he appeared as no monster. On his last go ‘round he must’ve put on quite a show for he had reached the limits of his Christian wife’s grace. She threatened to divorce him, finally. For the first time he checked himself into rehab, and from what I heard was doing great and all were proud. What happened between then and when his wife found his body I can not say. There was no note only the pills untaken.

Granted I didn’t give my boss such a narrative, but I was able to hit on all the points. My boss showed concern and even friendly affection. I was impressed. In addition to the change in next week’s schedule I needed she gave me the rest of the day off, which was great as I felt pretty spent. And, I must admit, that I felt unburdened in telling this seemingly unsympathetic wretch my tale of woe. It’s amazing what will pull us together in the end. I’m even smiling as I type this.

Later that evening I got a call from my best friend. Unlike Crystal my friend works to rile me up and I her. My friend had just had a fight with her live in boyfriend and was calling from a motel. Not a big deal; just the petty response to a petty ultimatum. Anyway she needed a distraction so I picked her up and went to an Indian restaurant. I told her I had a good uplifting story for her.

“Is that true?” she said.
“Most of it. Only my cousin isn’t dead; fully rehabbed and enjoying a sober married life last I heard.” I smiled at my friend, and she laughed.
“So, why such a dramatic story?” she queried. I explained I hadn’t intended on giving my boss the whole shebang, but her reception of it was so redeeming I just wanted to enjoy this moment of getting along with my supposed betters for once. And, besides, I had the story of my cousin written in a short-story I had shit canned, I thought I might let it see the light of day in some other form.
“What are you going to do with your three days off?” My friend asked. “I wanted to put in a serious start on my (now legendary unwritten…) book. And, I don’t know, find something I can dust off and use for my next blog since it’s about mid month and I’ve no idea what I’m going to write.”

The long lost, and what is only now recalled.

2005-02-19T18:34:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me one of those chain emails that are a list of questions about one’s self that have already been answered by the sender, then you are to copy and paste, replace their answers and send it on to ten other people. The idea is to learn a little more about your friends. The idea is to feel more connected. A good cause for certain and since it wastes no paper like pamphlets or regular chain mail of old, you’d think more self-absorbed people like myself would indulge, but I suppose we are way too self-important to spare the time. Plus, I don’t have ten people to send it to. Well, I do have ten friends, more or less, but I recently replaced my hard-drive and thus their e-addresses are gone from me. But, this person sends me a lot of emails that I bother to take the time to read and be entertained by, yet, I rarely return the favor. Not just her, but a lot of good people get neglected by me. So, guilt wins out, and an actual desire to correspond with this wonderful individual, and I sit down to write her an email. Only nothing comes of it. Not writer’s block, just actually nothing to write about. Nothing has happened. This also puts my promise to blog monthly in jeopardy. Instead of wasting her time with some mind numbing pass-ya-on-the-street-hi-how’s-the-weather-I’m-fine-we’ll-see-ya-later letter, which I hate, I decided to copy and paste the little survey and send it back to her.

One of the questions was what I thought I wanted to be when I was little. I answered in one word: older. I wanted a lot of things to be over and past. I didn’t enjoy being young, or, at least, a teenager. First of all, you stink and you don’t even know it. Walk into a middle or high school, and/or your teenage sibling’s room and it’ll reek of an awful, musty funk. And to think, little girls, this made me want to pop bra straps, demanded that I awkwardly and boorishly shove a clammy hand up your shirts or down your pants, take note of every panty line, every upskirt engraved in mind when good fortune allowed a glimpse at the elusive, nigh-attainable and that most sacrosanct of chimerical territories. Yet, I say sacrosanct when we lusted to defile. Everyone speaks so nostalgic of our first endeavor to grasp our sexuality, myself included, like its all giggling fear and comic fumbling. They do not say how we were junkies for a drug we had yet to taste, and once tasted caused to frenzy more than appreciate. What he said to get you in bed were just lines. What he said when finished and lying there all young and naked, running a finger down the bridge of your nose, the slope of your breast, the hinge of your thighs, those were just lines too. The female flesh was not of delicate beauty, not as we perceived it. Not then. Female flesh was all of ice-cream and Coca-Cola, was all of Nintendo and masturbation; all of whatever selfish and instant gratifying thing we could think of when not, otherwise, thoughtless.

Not to say I, myself, never mistook this for love. Nor would it do to say that I never had a good time. There were plenty of those. It’s just I was too uncomfortable in my own skin to understand satisfaction, and too paranoid (I still am) to trust anything for too long: parents, girlfriends, friends, opinions, fashion, etc. I kept thinking something, anything, better lay ahead. This remains my hope.

Before all that, though, before the shyness, the hormonal rages, before I was this jaded disaffected Gen Yer (yet, directly contributing to), before I found myself not caring with so much gusto about it all, I was a child. I swear it’s true.

Back then, when being a grown up was this illimitable state of being, had someone asked me what I wanted to be when I was all grows up I would’ve answered a comedian. When Richard Pryor was in jail (Jesus, now that I think about it I believe I lifted this info from the movie House Party) he told jokes to stay off beatings or rape. This way, too, did the torch of laughter first light in me. Being the youngest and fattest of a bunch of roughneck boys coming up in a trailer park becoming a quick wit and clever clown did much to divert their attention from bullying. Not always, but most of the time.

My first and only “bits” were done before an audience of barefoot and cool-aid stained trailer park kids. My stage was the roof of this dead and beaten hatch back. I’ve never had a mind for cars so I do not recall make or model, just that it was grey and kicked the fuck in. The windows remained intact and we could see a black wallet resting openly on the panel between the two front seats. The car appeared a month, or so, before I was doing my stand-up, but that was not long enough to convince us that it was abandoned. Though we slobbered over the windows dreaming of what size booty hide inside that wallet none of us broke through. It wouldn’t have surprised us one bit if it belonged to an older sibling’s friend, or some such, who’d come looking for us, or, worse, one of the silent creepy denizens whose eyes popped through closed blinds and watched us until we passed from sight. It wasn’t until the following summer we felt confident enough to free the billfold and it’s well earned, if only by patience, holdings. Turned out we busted through the windshield in the dead of night for three dollars. We bought Garbage Pail Kids cards, fought over the gum and ownership. I didn’t even bother to throw in any amount of my surplus weight into the mix.

But, yeah, when I was nine atop a windowless (we went ahead and went smashy-smashy on the rest of the glass) jalopy telling jokes to a bunch of shirtless, dirty yard apes, if you would’ve asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up I would have told you I wanted to be Eddie Murphy.

There were no real “bits” or “material”. The only joke I remember was something about how God used lightening as a gun and smote any and all on a whim. The laughter was not real laughter. We were playing. I was pretending to be a jokester and the other kids were pretending to be an overjoyed audience. It was among the many things we did to forget we lived in a trailer park. That’s why we were all friends, even if not really, because we couldn’t pull that off alone. Or we simply didn’t want to.

Then came middle school. I can scale it in time by what I was wearing. Jesus, I used wear Genera Hyper-Color Tees, Guess over-alls. Z. Cavaricci. Cross Colors. Fuck, all that Nike, and I didn’t even play sports. I tried out for football once and wasn’t so much “cut” but asked to leave in front of everyone before I got myself hurt. And the coach was a relative of mine. My smart-ass mouth was the only constant through all those fashions and agony. Though my humor was obviously a self-defense mechanism, I look back and the humor seemed so inherent and ever present, I mean we dressed like clowns even. Skidz were just Zubas for rebels. Do you know how much Bugle Boy and Nautica I went through until I figured out it’s easier to hate these fuckers than it is to impress them? Then came high school where over-intellectualism was our self defense mechanism. It seemed everywhere we looked for God or meaning we found only jokes, smart-assed comments. We loved ourselves and each other for it. We still do. When all those scientists figure out what dark matter is I guarantee you its going be a punch line. It’s not so much a cosmic ballet, but a well choreographed Marx Brothers movie, and we’ll all finally be treated as heralds and popular.

Of course, I didn’t want to be a teenager. It was humiliating, not just socially, but genetically. There you are feeling your absolute ugliest and with some uncontrollable urge to get naked in front of girls and for some reason wanting them to put their hands on you, the shit you said, the music you played! You can’t tell me that’s not…not…fucking awkward and funny. I shiver thinking about it, and I managed a pretty girl or two. I scraped together a relatively good circle of friends, some still with me. I had all that and I still felt like unadorned shit. That’s basic. That’s youth 101. Think about the kids who were getting the shit kicked out them by their parents on top of it, or those who were losing and/or lost their parents, those getting raped, abandoned, neglected, disfigured, retarded or dead. Think of how they would’ve traded all that childhood just to have a day of what we had. That’s funny. For any of us, all of us, deformed retards included, it could have been so much worse. That’s worth a chuckle. Especially now when I speak my umbrella motto designed to entail all good fortune and misfortune alike: We are only as lucky as the ants you did not step on. I hadn’t thought about it until now, but that’s just a variation of my old God & Lightening shtick. And, honestly, as honest as a guy can be, I’m talking of no one I know now. Similarity is just a cute little coincidence. All these sad kids I was familiar with by the time I was performing stand-up in the trailer park circuit. I guess they needed me as much as I needed a bully to shape me into me. Compared to those people, I was fat and happy and laughing all the way home. I’m laughing now, and, God, help me, I can’t tell you why half the time.

I don’t think I’m being overly cynical or too insensitive, especially being of a generation marked almost solely by those two things. And why I don’t feel too concerned with the content herein is due to the friend who sent me that chain email. Her name is Elise. She is sister to Emily, whom I’ve written of before. I’ve met Lise only twice, possibly a third time, the last of which was a couple of years ago. I didn’t say any of this to her in my reply. I simply said I wanted to be older when I was a kid. Yet, a few days later she calls me out of the blue just to tell me she really liked that answer. I hadn’t spoken to her since last we met. I didn’t even know she had my number. I’m glad for it. I mean, lately, with all this nothing going on I thought I was going to lose my mind. If weren’t for that email I wouldn’t have remembered all that, and that I like now so much better. My contentment is not total. I’m concerned with my position in this life, but I’m not terrified of it anymore. And not only do I have the ability to not care what idiots think, I have the capacity and wherewithal to know why. Only in a world this fucked can the mundane and day to day of it all drive you insane, and the random, and unpredictable moments be the sobering ones. I needed to hear it as much as she needed to say it out loud to me, cuz if you’re the only one who’s laughing that’s a bad sign. Thanks for getting in touch, Elise.

I know this one may be cliché, or at least a tired point, but keep in mind this big joke I speak of, I never said it was a good one or fresh. I mean, come on, its like trillions of years old by now.

Reading and/or Watching Rainbow

2005-02-17T21:29:00.000-05:00

New one comes up in a couple days. No later than Saturday. You have Elise to thank for this. You'll see why. Until then you all should go buy the "Wonderfalls" DVD, or read "In The Hand of Dante" by Nick Tosches. Chris, read "Men Of Tomorrow". It's in the graphic novel section.

Finally a new title wherein the author confesses hisfondness of Bush

2005-01-19T18:43:00.000-05:00

Finally a new title wherein the author confesses his fondness of Bush, and how with hard work and sticktoitiveness he plans to become ever increasingly less American.

Dedicated to my three dedicated readers: Leeny, Chris, and Shaun.

Winter is come to Sioux Falls again, having arrived here a few weeks ago. Only today has it warmed enough for me to stir and write for you. It is the warmest day since the cold has set, yet there is no sun. Very good, I say. Away with that lying bastard, I say. I once looked to it for warmth, as one should and most do, but the sun, like one’s perfect parents, dearest heroes and all other things utterly human, has let me down. You see, out here, in the winter if you want to feel warm again the last thing you want to see is the sun. Clouds keep the heat in.

And on those days, when there is complete gray cover, I sense a marvel unseen. Because, after all, the curious must wonder, where does that heat come from? I checked the ground to see if maybe it seeps up, and under a foot of hard packed snow I came up nil, no shit. I surmise in mind and heart that it must come from everything else: Every moving car, every sleeping bug, all the fat bunnies and squirrels hopping hither and yon, all the bundled idiot joggers and idiot Jodys that feel they must be out on the streets and sidewalks. From every home, the mall, and McDonald’s, from the jobless Indians, the buck-toothed Ethiopians, the unchecked Hispanics, and every other pasty white motherfucker I see. All of us, or “Allus” as the regular non-African black people would say, keeping warm by one another, barely speaking to one another. There’s a Christmas story in there somewhere, and it’s yours if you can find it.

Not me. Not today. My plan to endear you all with my next blog was to be some yarn about how Bush is all right with me. I’d spell it with a capital b having you all drop jawed, hands to your face Culkin style, only to find out what I’m really saying is I prefer a little hair on a cunt. Grow a little grass on the field. But it’s been too long since I’ve had a good proper lay, and even then she was bald. When you look down to watch it go in and out it looks like you’re fucking a kid. Fuck that. And like I was saying I’ve been too long without to do it justice. I’d write with too much adoration, not enough lust. I’d give it too much power. I’d wax philosophic about the unwaxed… Sorry. No more lines, I promise. I had meant to honor Bambi Woods, Kay Parker, Barbara Dare, and Nina Hartley. I would’ve ranted about the wayward direction women’s sexual liberation has taken. But that’s why people tune into Oprah to hear some menopausal liberal/conservative hybrid brunette in a suit give it to you straight. They don’t want to hear it from me. I don’t blame them. Besides, there is no way I could convince anyone that there’s a conservative bone in my body. They’d just think I was being funny. They’d label me a fraud and for all the wrong reasons.

You see, I, like the sun, am no longer my former. I’ve no right to write as though I’m so hard edged. Not any more. What can I say? One minute you’re coked to the fucking quick tearing ass down the interstate because for some fucked up reason the outlet mall sounds like a good idea, and the next you’re sipping “sleepy time” herbal tea in front of the Animal Planet channel, and rubbing lotion on your elbows. Then your doctor tells you you have high blood pressure and wants to put you on medication. I’m only twenty-seven. I once had a mid-mid life crisis when I was twenty-five. A friend my age was getting married and like TV had taught me I thought only of what that meant to me, blaming her for forcing me to grow up, really hamming it up to my friends, all of it feigned. Other than happiness for her I felt nothing for it. It was just my cue. But all of that acting out and playing pretend would not compare, nor could such antics ever convey that instantaneous implosion of shame and irresponsibility where the mind reels, and the heart bottoms out. I was no longer impressed with myself. Glory. Hallelujah. I said no to the meds and got a dietitian and a regimen. It’s strict. I eat much less calories than the recommended intake for the average American male. Good. The average American male eats shit and sits on his fat ass looking on the internet at what passes for porn stars these days; all blonde and double fisting themselves and whatever ridiculous object they can fit inside, making his poor wife feel old and unattractive in her au natural. It’s like they just want to see a hole where a woman once lay. It’s like they’re saying less pussy! What? Next we’ll be chopping off those cumbersome legs, mounting computer monitors on the headboards, and the mouse under the pillow.

Enough. I’m dropping my fat ass, becoming less American. Fuck the internet. I’m adding three hours a day of writing to my regimen. Why not? There’s nothing good on TV and all that porn is starting to run together. And at the end of this when I’m this beautiful Un-American pussy lovin’ writer I’m grabbing me up a hottie brunette or redhead (At least trim the hedges though, baby. I’m trying get some adult action, not chop through jungle.), stealing us a car with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, a plate of coke and we’re turning our backs to the sun and going home. Wherever the fuck that is.

On a Honey Wagon to Hell

2004-11-18T18:41:00.000-05:00

Hallo to all! Chris sent me an email to make me jealous of what stories can spring from the Dirty-Dirty, no pun intended, about a couple of guy who clean out septic tanks. Instead it made me nostalgic for me youth. What follows is the reply I sent. All of it happened. And for those of you who don't know, a Honey Wagon is what the truck these people use is called.

Enjoy.

When I was in middle school there was this kid we called Honey Wagon Wayne. His father owned the business that handled the business of our community. He looked like a retarded Bruce Lee and spoke just like Muhammed Ali, when he was still Cashus, but slower and raspier, as Clint Eastwood's impersonation would go. He was filling in a large map of the world spread across the floor in social studies class, I had walked on it (no big deal in and of itself) to get to the other side of the room. I hadn't felt anything underfoot, but heard behind me: "Oooooh, you done stepped upon my finger and crayon!" He franticly scuttled on all fours toward me and punched me square in the ass. He punched my butthole. A redneck on the other side of class said, "Look at 'im. He can't wait to get at other people's shit! You gon' do your daddy proud, Honey Wagon!" Everyone laughed. Honey Wagon Wayne stared him down, "Oooooh (he started all threats with oooooh), you gonna git it from me. You gonna git it from me."

A couple days later he was busted by police at school when he showed off a gun he had hidden in his locker.

We never saw him again, but he made his point clear. Honey Wagon Wayne was not going to take shit off anyone.

love, love, love,
jody

My review of Halo 2

2004-11-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

HALO 2 is so awesome!

Waiting for that money-shot from the Lord

2004-08-18T00:15:00.000-04:00

The last, like, two of you still checking up on this: please, help. i really do have writer's block for this blog. I don't know what to do. I know! I'll look at some more porn, again.

astronology

2004-06-27T00:34:00.000-04:00

given that i write so much about my past, i thought a couple of you might find this funny. i got it from theonion. this may be the only time not only their horoscope is correct, but that a horoscope in general be absolutely correct. enjoy.

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
If you had to do it all over again, you wouldn't change a thing, which proves that you're a masochistic submoron.

"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i'd never come to hate" part three

2004-06-17T02:24:00.000-04:00

A sex party is no place for a prude. Especially if the prude is the host herself. We gathered at a friend's house to listen to this woman who looked like a Dixie Chicks alternate tell us about vibrators and massage oils. This is good and fine. I've no problem with sex toys. Strap 'em on and light 'em up, ladies. More power to you. Fill your cunts up 'til your heart's content, and let me know what I can do to help; even if it's simply shutting the door behind me. I just want you girls happy and safe. But don't feed me beer, hand me lube, and stick a double ended dildo between my legs and expect me to behave. That's idiocy at the highest degree! Don't get me wrong. I'm not gonna not have fun, but I'm for damn sure I'm not gonna behave. That's enough of that. I get too heated thinking about that huffy Dixie Chick telling me that the new "something-something 5000" vibrator is an adult and mature thing. I know better. No one's reciting rosaries on anal beads.

And that was Shaun's second night here in Sioux Falls, SD. Another southern soul has sailed into this land locked port town.

Before his arrival I was having a drink with B-reezy and the sweet Anna Claire. We were at a cafe downtown called Riverwalk, and playing was this jazz band; this loud, smiley-white-guys jazz band. We spoke of the Women's Rights movement, Cybil Shepherd masturbating in a golfcart, and Captain 11. Captain 11 is a local legend who used to host some cartoon hour on a local station for the kids here. Anna Claire recalls him being drunk on the set and hornery with the children. He wrote a tell all book about his drinking and perversions. Where's Charlie Kaufman when you need him? I spoke of the coming of Shaun and B-reezy asked me why he, and myself, would leave a place that has given us many happy moments. I told her, you can get full up on anything. She asked me what that means and I couldn't tell her. The loud smiley-white-guys jazz band wouldn't let me, wouldn't let me get down to business. All you can do in that environment is sip your drink, wonder what the poor are doing, and smile at how nice the evening is. It was no place for discussions on love or wretched cunts.

But I'm in my own home now. I have my music playing. I can speak freely. I can tell you when I saw that cute face and those big titties again I was choking and vomiting, and if I didn't get out of GA soon I was gonna drown.

5

"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i'd never come to hate"
part three "wherein the narrator finally gets to the goddamn point and we can hear 'bout them titties, and we can finally get a new title"

Back in the day, before the beautiful artist, after my first girlfriend whom bit me on the nose and was consequentially thrown across the room, was Daisy. I was in high school then. I was in a play that she was working back stage for. I had long hair, wore black, and sported a studded cat collar, and many cats it did attract. One was Daisy. She walked up with that cute face, those blue eyes working that magic under black hair. Creamy white skin. Round ass. And did I mention big titties? Sure, I was mature beyond my years, childish long after its due, but my cock was right in sync with my eighteen year old body. Like a divining rod it had sensed her across that unlit stage, behind those black velvet curtains way before she ventured forth and asked if she could wear my cat collar.

She smoked Camels. She liked everything I liked. My friends liked her. They were jealous of me. She and I fucked, and fucked good, and usually timed it not only so that we came together, but so that we both finished up in time for Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was my favorite show. Should've been great. Should've been the one.

Slowly and surely she changed over the weeks; became more possessive, started whining, and making a fool of herself. She kept acting like a child trying to play big like an adult. She robbed all my tastes and opinions and perverted them as her own. I became sick of her pretty quick, but hormones wouldn't let me leave her.

Daisy wasn't even her real name. She gave herself that nickname. Who the fuck gives themselves their own nickname? Jackasses, whiney bitches, and wannabes, that's who. I was miserable, but I just wanted to fuck so bad.

What finally did it was the release of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. I had been looking forward to it for months. I had wrecked my car and we were taking hers. Her mother told me to do the driving in Atlanta. This sent Daisy into a hissy-fit. She bitched and bewailed the entire ride down to Phipps Plaza about how the drive was basically a couple of lefts and a right. I let her go on and on. I said nothing. My cock and I conspired, soon we'd give the baby its bottle. I just kept repeating my mantra: "Just think of Mike and the bots, just think of those titties, man."

We watched the movie and I could've escaped into it, found some peaceful quiet place among those obscurely referenced jokes and sight gags, but no. The awful baby had to make a show of how well she got the jokes, which she didn't. Her laughter was slightly staggered behind mine. This was the final straw. I would break up with her first thing tomorrow; right after I gave the baby her bottle one last time. Because, who needs this? Cute faces, big titties will surely come my way again, right?

After the movie, in the parking deck, she started in about driving home. I told her, no, that I'd made a promise to her mother. She began calling me controlling, and an asshole for siding with her mom and treating her like a child. This carried on out of the parking deck and onto the street. When she said that she was glad to see that I got what I fucking wanted I got the tunnel vision, the blood rush to the brain, adrenaline stampeding through my muscles calling a dormant hatred to arms...

In that way you fuck up when you're angry, when you stumble as you storm off, when you try to push your way through a door that opens towards you--I made a wrong turn. At a stop light she said "See? You're not some fucking excellent driver!" and let open the flood gates.

When I'm angry with you, when I'm truly fed up, I don't raise my voice. I do not wish to touch or be touched. I just want to bring you to terms calmly and coldly. But take me just a step beyond that...

I turned to her, got in her fucking cute face, "SHUT UP!" I hit the dash. "SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU STUPID FUCKING BABY! YOU WHINEY BITCH, SHUT THE FUCK UP! I'M SICK OF YOU, EVERYONE WE KNOW HATES YOUR GODDAMN GUTS, YOU SQAULIN' ASS KID! I HATE YOUR GODDAMN GUTS, YOU SORRY CUNT!" She trembled and sobbed backing herself against the car door. The only sanity left in me was fighting this urge to kick the shit out of her. I wanted nothing more than to live my life putting my fist through her face. I'm not sure how long I could've kept that resistance to bruise, snap, and tear every part of her, but, fortunately, a car had stopped beside us that night. It was occupied by some Buckhead couple. The man had that man-thing going, that "let's wait here, honey. that poor, poor girl may need me to have you watch me be a hero. it's my civic call." He gave me a stern, "Hey!" My attention diverted I struggled to get out of the car and take all this out on him. He saw my intention and sped off. Perhaps he felt more suited for kittens in trees.

My senses coming back to me, my civic restraint back in place, I pulled into a coffee shop parking lot. Since I was in no condition I dropped the keys on the floorboard and told her to pick 'em up. I told her she better fucking drive, and she better not say a fucking word doing it. How does the baby like her bottle? And on the way home I had my hand out the window gliding it up and down with the wind. I was smiling. I had broken the spell. I was freed from the cunt, no longer under the tyranny of the cock. Well, for the time being anyway.

After that I only fell in love with artists, teachers, and scientists. I'm better for it. I have a desire for the strong, for the intelligent, and wild. No more do I blind myself to others misgivings, but am open to the vulnerability of others as precious, of how a woman can grow beautiful and rooted around her flaws until they are not flaws but where beauty springs from. And for a while these women were everywhere. And I wanted a taste of them all. Therein lies my tragic flaw. But the justice here is that since Daisy most of them have done the leaving. For myself it is hard to say whether I have withered around, or earnestly begun to grasp my own flaws. And if the latter be true I should struggle still as it seems to me a girl, a woman will always mature faster than this boy, stronger than this man; at least the kind of female I find myself fascinated with.
In GA I had finally seen that these artists, teachers, and scientists were all something I'm not: successful. At twenty-five I found myself just a bartender still talking all that smack about writing, being published, and being somebody. I was beginning to choke, starting to vomit.
And wouldn't you know it, right when I was at my lowest SHE walked into my bar. The One. Excited she ran up to me to hug and laugh. She wanted to know all about me. I stood there staring at her with my mouth wide open. It was Daisy. Fucking Daisy after all those years, telling me how she now works in the bar with me. Fucking Daisy: fatter, with bastard child, and all too happy to be arriving at the very station in life I was beginning to feel was my doom.
Enough was enough. I was full up on this life. A month later, after I had gotten the money, I followed the Lady Windham out of Atlanta. I'm here now, in Sioux Falls. I'm here in a true now where no ghosts of days past haunt me, where no semi-precious locale forces all the bitter-sweet moments down my throat. I'm here now where I am master of my memory, where I recall who I want, and only my loved ones have the ability to call on me. And because of all this I am a paid writer now. I am published now. For an article on David Byrne the Athens rag Flagpole gave me a little scratch. Nothing big, but, finally, not nothing.

Coolnes, Park

2004-05-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

this has to be one of the coolest pics ever. i now give it you all.

Nothing, Not Anything. At All.

2004-05-08T16:20:00.000-04:00

no story for a little while longer. i got a bigger fish to fry currently. So I thought I'd do some self-referential shit-site wise anyway.
first of all anyone of you who knows me, i'm sure knows shaun, or miss bunny (whom i've never met) and enjoy their little sites as much as i. for those of you that don't you should check 'em out. shaun, i guess you could say, maintains my site as computers are one of the many things i'm inept at. he asked me recently if he could post something on my page. i said, sure. i didn't know he was going to paste his mug on it. so now i guess i'm sponsored. furthermore it is a mystery to me why he ripped off my friendster profile to add "surly and prone to fits of wrastlin'" but much about that man remains a mystery to me.
b-reezy is also very much worth a look. her name is actually breezy, and i'll not waste words on an obviously unique name. but you all feel free to hit her up for the 411. her log is far less fancy than shaun's or bunny's, and much less winded than mine. but there is an experience there that isn't so much a mass-media one. some entries i can't read past the first couple of lines because they can be so personal. and i think this only because i barely know her. if i didn't know her at all, or perhaps if i new her better it would be more comfortable to read. i feel it would make me presumptuous on our next encounter. feels like cheating. so i pass over those, sadly, knowing i'm missing out on something. but not you, people. read it all. i'd go on and on about breezy's, bunny's, or shaun's site, but if you don't already know, maybe you don't need to know.

what follows is an email i recieved concerning my writings on this site from a romanian friend of mine all the way from romania. funny how that works. i think its adorable that she writes english the same way she speaks it.

"i checked out your site and i couldn't understand
something:are you in love with emily or not(maybe you
don't know either...)anyway i understood she was
special for you;am i wrong?
you know something?i like indians and i always know
you aren't 100% american;do you remember when i asked
you,but you didn't tell me then.you see,i finally
found out!
i think you're a smart,nice guy who deserves a
family(beautiful and understanding wife,cute
kids...).a guy like you can't stay a whole life by
himself. this can't be hapiness.maybe it's time to
change your attitude and... your life.think about and
be more optimistic!
take care
never ever hit a woman again!"
--(signed the girl from romania)
first of all i find it nice that indians have fans overseas. the rest of that paragraph with the not 100% american and all, i'm not sure about. it is possible she was drunk on red wine and talking jibberish, but her english is too good. no matter. i stand by it and confirm the accusation in good faith. i am not 100% american, and i'm glad it's out.
furthermore i appreciate being called smart and nice; too many people in my life have deprived me of my appropriate titles. but i didn't fail to notice that no where in there is it said that i'm attractive. that's fine. i can make my peace with that. but what i can't stomach is knowing i will have to continue staying my life solely with my personality. and other than some minor senior superlative award we know that personality isn't going to get one shit in life. but maybe i need to change my attitude and be more optimistic. this isn't hapiness. where is my beautiful wife, and my cute kids? who has them? and what in god's name does he think he's doing with them?
and the "never hit a woman again" is that good advice or the implications of a threat; a line drawn in the sand?

i leave it you, my readers, to ponder these things.

jody

"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i would never come to hate"part two: "and there is this other girl I smacked up real good"

2004-04-27T12:59:00.000-04:00

"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i would never come to hate"
part two: "and there is this other girl I smacked up real good"

ORIGIN OF LOVE
"when the earth was still flat and the clouds made of fire
and the mountains stretched up to the sky, sometimes higher
folks roamed the earth like big rolling kegs
they had two sets of arms
they had two sets of legs
they had two faces peering out of one giant head
so they could watch all around them as they talked while they read
and they never knew nothing of love
it was before the origin of love
origin of love
the origin of love
origin of love
well there were three sexes then
one that looked like two men glued on back to back
they were the children of the sun
and similar in shape girth were the children of the earth
they looked like two girls rolled up in one
and the children of the moon was like a fork shoved on a spoon
they were part sun part earth part daughter part son
oh the origin of love
well the gods grew quite scared of our strength and defiance
and thor said i'm gonna kill them all with my hammer
like i killed the giants
but zeus said no
you'd better let me use my lightning like scissors
like i cut the legs off the whales
dinosaurs into lizards
then he grabbed up some bolts, he let out a laugh
said i'll split them right down the middle
gonna cut them right up in half
and then storm clouds gathered above into great balls of fire
and then fire shot down from the sky in bolts
like shining blades of a knife
and it ripped right through the flesh
of the children of the sun and the moon and the earth
and some indian god sewed the wound up to a hole
turned it 'round to our bellies to remind us the price we payed
and osiris, and the gods of the nile gathered up a big storm
to blow a hurricane
to scatter us away
a flood of wind and rain, a sea of tidal waves
to wash us all away
and if we don't behave they'll cut us down again
and we'll be hopping 'round on one foot
looking through one eye
the last time i saw you we had just split in two
you was looking at me, i was looking at you
you had a way so familiar i could not recognize
cause you had blood on your face
and i had blood in my eyes
but i swear by your expression
that the pain down in your soul was the same
as the one down in mine
that's the pain
that cuts a straight line down through the heart
we call it love
we wrapped our arms around each other
tried to shove ourselves back together
we were making love, making love
it was a cold dark evening such a long time ago
when by the mighty hand of jove
it was a sad story how we became lonely two-legged creatures
the story, the origin of love
that's the origin of love
oh yeah, the origin of love
the origin of love
the origin of love"
--Hedwig and The Angry Inch

I quote the song in its entirety for good reason. I want to talk about soul mates for a bit. That sound nice? I don’t think that I believe in them, but I want to. Just like I don’t believe in a God, but I can see how a feller could get off on such a thought. And for me to believe in God He would have to come down Himself and tell me in no uncertain terms that He wants, no, needs me for a sunbeam. And I don’t mean come to me in the faces of all the little children, or the warmth on a clear blue day. But me and Him face to face.

This weekend the Lady Windham’s (that’s Emily Windham) father came for a visit. It made me happy. I have much respect for the man. I had a cigarette with him on Emily’s porch, and I’m a guy who gave up smoking. And it was menthol at that. I even got a chance to have a beer with the guy, and this is a man who never drinks. To get a picture of why I could respect a man so, is he looks similar to and acts like Hunter S. Thompson. He’s brilliant and off the wall but without the use of drugs. But we’ll not hold that against him. In fact we envy him for it. Hardly seems fair he could be so considering all the hours we’ve logged in MJQ’s bathroom snorting coke. But then that being true of ourselves we can’t really complain of time wasted, can we?

I only had lunch with the man. The elegance and intimacy of dinner was reserved for he, his daughter Emily, and….her boyfriend. I’ve known her longer, and harder.

The song up there; that’s one of mine and Emily’s songs. Our number one song is David Bowie’s “Five Years”. We’ve known each other for two. We have three left. I don’t know about her but I intend on ending this then. It just seems perfect, you know? And if you don’t know I suggest you listen to that song over and over until you do know.

If you can imagine this: there they are sitting at dinner in the nicest restaurant in Sioux Falls, Minerva’s. And it is a nice, classy joint. All wood finish and brass railings. Fine, fine steaks and martinis. All enclosed in a corner building that looks like it belongs in some East Coast City about the time that painting at the beginning of Cheers takes place. They’re laughing and riding on inside jokes and stories, sparking, igniting new ones. And I’m outside in the cold telling myself I’m too busy anyway what with my, now legendary, unwritten book and that next installment of my blog and all.

Emily calls me her soul mate. She calls a few people that. I call her my imaginary friend come true. But my point is a lot of people call a lot of people that; soul mate that is. Within the first six months of all my earlier relationships I’ve thought this and said this too. I’ve also done the whole “we just fit, you know?” and “man, I tell her things I don’t tell anyone else, and that was in like the first time hanging out with her!” And this leads to the whole “I don’t know. I still love her, but I’m not ‘in’ love with her, you know?” and “I feel like I can’t talk to her, we don’t communicate.” Rinse and repeat. How does the old saying go? “Insanity is doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results.” So where does this pin me in my love life. You fucking tell me, right? I’m resting on the faith that whoever she is she’s smarter than me and will be able to let me know in no uncertain terms that we are soul mates. In other words she’d have to perform an act of God. –That I don’t believe in.-- It’s high stakes, folks, but think of the pay off.

And it’s not jealousy jealousy that I feel for the boyfriend. I don’t feel he’s in my place. It’s just that before now Emily and I were undefined even to ourselves. That felt like magic; that no one could quantify or name the gravity between us. Everyone thought that we were in love, or brother and sister, or mother and father, and best yet, something all together new in the relationships of men and women. I never knew what we were, nor did she. Now with him I feel abruptly and violently defined. I’m the best friend. “No, her boyfriend’s at home, we’re just really good friends.” Where the fuck is the fun in that? And it’s hard to love her as freely and harder to leave her be with him. And harder still that the boyfriend is a fixture in Sioux Falls. Like a lamp post. And she’s holding on to that. In fact, one reason why her father came to town was to help them sign a lease on a house together. Me, folks, I’m a dog, a smart mutt what likes his freedom, and there is still a chain between her and I, and I pull on it always. And she is a girl who wants her cake and to eat it too, and the heart to believe it could be thus. And why shouldn’t it? I like her boyfriend. But what I don’t like is being inadvertently tethered to a lamp post. Perhaps it will come to pass that we won’t make it even the five years.

But enough of that! Fuck that! Let’s get to the part where I smacked her good; drunk and in public no doubt! Baby, we’re back in Atlanta. It’s a rainy fucking Saturday that we had planned to spend the whole day together. I even made a mix CD so we could have a soundtrack. It was Jody and Emily loosed upon the town, boy, and we meant to fuck it up proper! But so many things went wrong. First it rained. Second I was late as I was coming from Athens and hung over. Thirdly, she had started a new job and needed to go shopping for new conservative work clothes. We met at a bar near her house. She had to buy me a few drinks before she could convince me that it would be fun to go to the mall. Man alive, did she get it wrong. We go to Lenox Mall, a ritzy marble tiled mall, where none of us are welcome. And for whatever reason there were sales and clearances abound, and you know women. We were supposed to be there for only a couple of hours at the most before resuming our Saturday. It turned into four, and she wasn’t done. When she said she wanted to go to the MAC store I had finally lost my grip. I needed drink; solid and strong. And many. I went up stairs to pay lots of many for overpriced drinks. But this is Atlanta and they rob you anywhere, and you’ll thank them anyway for it in the end. After all, who’s doing who the favor? After several Jamesons, which I’m sipping as I write this, I wondered openly about the many fruits suspended in a clear liquid in a huge glass jug on the bar. The barkeep told me it was some fruity martini concoction. Eeegad, the rich even have their own version of hunch-punch! Why must they take everything? And inflate the prices? I had three. Why not? My money is just as good as the rich’s to the bartender, just as my money is just as worthless to me as it is to the rich. I couldn’t taste it. Not as drunk as I was. Not after that much Jameson. However, I declared it the most fantastic drink ever on this Earth, and immediately ran down to tell Emily. We agreed to meet in thirty minutes at a particular oaken bench. I was late, she was angry. I was drunk and promised she would soon be too, if she would just take my hand. Back we went. I bought her the drink. She informed me that it was awful. I bought her another. I needed to be certain. She confirmed the second time too.

Then on I bought her whatever her heart desired. We were beginning to have fun, finally. The day was saved! No. I remember we did get into an argument. I don’t remember over what. There’s no telling with the two of us. I slapped her. I was out of control. The people in the bar all turned to look. She became angry with me. Like an angry mother that can quiet the whole room. No man would come to defend her. It was unnecessary. You could tell that just by looking at her. A blind man could see it. She ordered me to take her home. I apologized all the way to the car. She wouldn’t speak to me. She sat down in the passenger seat and slumped with her foot pressed against the windshield. I’m a good city-driver, but I am not a graceful one. I make 90 degree lane changes in small openings and follow within inches, gas it if there is more than foot of space, and I brake only when absolutely necessary. Emily has never been comfortable with my driving. And this journey back to her apartment proved too much for her. I was slow (seemingly) to brake behind a stopped SUV, she tensed her leg. It was enough to crack my windshield with her foot. This surprised the both of us. She apologized. I said, no, don’t worry about it. I deserved it.

I took her home. And then drove back to Athens. This is an hour away and I was fretfully wasted on alcohol. I often said to friends I should do an editorial on the local news to let everyone know that if they were on these particular roads the night or day before they should really get down on their knees and thank God he had spared them, for I was on the road that day or night. And I was in a state that could easily allow me to be a useful tool of the Lord. And He spared them. That’s right, folks. Don’t hate me for me my drinkin’ and drivin’, for I am but a tool for the Lord to teach teenagers the horrors of drinking and driving, to teach you, possibly, that you took your loved one’s life for granted. And you’ll always regret that the last thing you told them, was “bring back eggs.”

Say your prayers, people. Be kind to your fellow man, for I am out there. I am God’s Wrath.

Whatever. When I got back I could not sleep. I told my room mates I had hit Emily Windham. The only reason they had not turned me away was because of how pathetic I looked. This was, after all, the second time I’d hit a woman. And a woman I loved, no doubt. I was a sad sappy sucker.

I called her the next day. She said we should just forget about it, but she made no effort to hide her utter disappointment. I hung up, felt like shit, and sat down at my computer to email somebody something. I noticed a bruise on the index finger of my left hand. There were actually four. Small ones. Two on the back and two on the palm, or inside of the finger. Memory came flooding back. And I laughed and laughed.

I called Emily back. “Do you remember what happened before I slapped you?” She said, no, and in an unsure way. I asked another question, “Do you remember biting the holy fuck out of my finger at the bar?” She didn’t say anything. It was coming back to her, as well. In arguing my left hand wondered to her face. Not an uncommon thing, we are often touchy-feely with one another. She took it in her mouth and gnashed down. I went with my right to push against her face to get my finger out of her mouth. Not thinking “face” or “my hand hitting against it”, mind you, put to quickly react and use my right for leverage to get my left hand out of a vice-grip.

Since you know how this one ends too, I’ll cap it off by saying she apologized and now wishes to repay me for my windshield.

And what I’d like to say to that future soul mate o'mine, and this is probably needless since you’re smarter than me, love, don’t fucking bite me. Just don’t. I don’t want to hurt you. So, please, unless it’s love bites on the neck, which I’m sure is this insanely cute thing between us, don’t fuck with me, cuz I don’t know what I’ll do. And in the end it’s just going to be your fault anyway. You’re too smart for this bullshit, so just leave it alone. Now let's make out.

tune in next time for "cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i'd never come to hate"
part three "wherein the narrator finally gets to the goddamn point and we can hear 'bout them titties, and we can finally get a new title"

"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i'd never come to hate"

2004-04-17T21:54:00.000-04:00

i had a strange night here, friends. many people i did not recognize kept calling me columbo. i was columbo and drunk last halloween. that was six months ago. last night a parrot bit the shit out of my finger at a cigar bar. i was drinking and i ate some pills, because i don't smoke cigars. i despaired last night, friends. i've tried several times to make friends with these people of sioux falls. i'm starting to feel like bill murray in "lost in translation". for the record i don't do pills anymore, i don't smoke cigarettes anymore, and i don't drink anywhere near as often as i once did. but last night. i needed a break. bettering one's self is hard tedious work, and not for those with weak constitutions. it finally got to me, so i took the night off. i also planned to write the next intallment of this blog yesterday, which i did. and we'll get to it soon enough. after i apologize for it. it went really long. i've split it up into three parts. so i guess now i'm doing a series in a series. i might as well. no one asked, or cares that i do this at all, and i'm doing this for no one. what's the difference in a quick paragraph or my life story, except for how much time i'm willing to spend in one sitting spilling my guts under that rediculous blue banner that reads that rediculous word, blogger? and spill my guts i did with this installment. i reccomend to no one that they do any of the things i have done. which should work out as no one is reading this. enjoy nonetheless.
jody
ps: this is too long, i'm going back and editing for grammar and what not. i did a once over for content. if you see mistaks just give me the benefit of the doubt. actually, always give me the benefit of the doubt.
4
"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i'd never come to hate"
part one: dui's, redheads, god, and me in the middle

The oddest thing about being an even-keeled male and hitting a woman are the circumstances surrounding the event. For one, you never in your life imagined that one day you would be guilty of this. You're against it. For the most part you remain morally ambiguous, you're not evil you're just an oppurtunist who understands good and evil can be, for the most part, fleeting; fluxuating moral trends. But you are fully aware of right and wrong, and therefore hold yourself accountable for your actions. Emotional involvement with these actions just isn't always necassary. In fact it can retard or pervert the good and fuel the evil. But you do have principles. You do not murder anyone. You ignore starting or participating in physical fights with strangers. You never risk friends' well being or friendships. You try to keep all pain and heartache isolated to just yourself. However, due to innumerable reasons beyond your control, if you are the least bit social you will fail at this plenty of times and in disheartening consistency. Though it helps, you do not need your father to have beaten your mother, nor do you really need to consider that all your female friends have in some way been abused by a male or males in their lives, but you know like you know the sun is hot without ever touching it that you do not hit a woman. Unless, of course, they ask for it.

My first act of physical aggression towards a female was with my first girlfriend. I was fifteen, so was she. (her boyfriend before me dragged her from her parents' living room by her hair to her bed and forced her to lay there while he ate her out. this is disturbing anyway, but the fact that his actions didn't lead to pleasuring himself is disturbing and odd.) We were wrestling. She got carried away. I firmly believe she did not intend for so much pain, but nevertheless she had me in a faux pin (i out weighed her by many pounds, it was faux) and came to my face for what I thought was a kiss. Instead she bit my nose hard, very, very hard. She was unaware of the signals a lot of pain in your nose emitts, nor did she know that those signals do not go to your brain, but to a baser part of your neural system. And while your mind reels at the pain in face, for it knows you're just lying there, your arms have thrown your girlfriend clear across the living room. She was a cheerleader and breaking falls came second nature to her. She was unharmed, and since it all happened in an instant she thought we were still playing. That is until I got up with tears in my eyes and "Gawd, why'd you do that?" After that it was all hugs and kisses, and poor, poor, me.

The first time I actually hit a woman was only a couple of years ago, just before I moved to New Orleans. The cute little redheaded girl I wrote about earlier, the one who wired me money to come back home to Georgia, to her (supposedly); it was she I hit (she at one point before she met me had been slipped roofies by an aquaintance, who then had his way with her. later he told her that he heard saying no, but understood her vibes to be saying yes.) Not only did I hit her, i back-handed her. We were drunk adn rowdy, and come from the best redneck bar ever, MudCats. Emotions were high because on the way home we were wasted and swerving, endangering our lives and the lives of everyone on the road. We got pulled over by two police cars. We should've been fucked, and we deserved to be. We always drove not just drunk but obliterated. Despite the fact that I could not hold a thought in my head, let alone speak it, I got out of the well earned DUI with a bobby-pin and a clove cigarette. I was the drunken union of Hunter Thompson and McGyver made carnate. After that the redhead and I had religion. We were holy, and untouchable. Arriving home with such highs, and still quite drunk,we got into some light wrestling. It has all the makings of turning into good rough sex, and I believe that was our intention, but something wouldn't let it make the transition. We just got rougher and meaner. We were fighting, not with punches or kicks, nor was there a word spoken, but we were rough-housing with malice and cruelty. I felt uncomfortable, but I couldn't stop and nor would she. I wanted to win. Then when I locked her in a real pin I somehow wound up with my head near her face. She bit the fuck out of my ear. Again signals were sent as my brain processed all the pain. When its intensity let up I saw the redhead was no longer beneath me on the bed. She was rising from the floor at the footboard, stunned. With everything over my body relayed its memory to my brain. In one motion I jerked my ear from her gnashing teeth, which hurt like a motherfucker, brought myself to my knees and back-handed the shit out of her and tossed her off the bed.

Of course I did not mean for this. Of course I would've conceded the little wrestling match had I saw this coming. I felt fucking terrible. I saw the enevitable accusations, and me confirming them. I saw the loss of respect from my friends followed by the loss of my friends. The cute little redheaded girl collected herself. She turned to me, "You just fucking hit me."

I couldn't face her. I said I'm sorry a couple of times very flatly. Not from apathy, obviously, but from shock. I was overwhelmed. I left the room. Not to run away or hide, but despite my desire to cowar I moved to a room more neutral, the spare bedroom-a room where I didn't hit anyone, and slumped on the bed. I didn't need her to judge me. I could do that on my own, nor would I discount her judgement either. I did, however, desire a sentencing from her. And no sentence would have been unfair. There are mistakes you can not walk away from. You know the difference between right and wrong. You hold yourself accountable for you actions. She came into the room. I stopped crying. I felt like I shouldn't get to, you know? She was cloaked in a blanket from my bed. She pushed me onto the bed, laid on me wrapping us into the blanket. It was hugs and kisses and poor, poor me.

The redhead and me had many problems, but our love for or our understanding of one another was not one of them. Just when you thought love wasn't enough to make a relationship work... it actually isn't, because after I got back, the day after I got back from New Orleans, she did something dispicable and I turned my back on her and didn't speak to her for a year. That said...
I'm grateful as a writer, or that part of me that seeks to understand as much human experience as I can, to every woman and whatever God. An unspoken principle between the cute little redhead and myself was that bodies were junk; everything was made to break. We ran on entropy, we chose to destroy and breakdown rather than be slave to time or human fallacy. We built us, we broke us. I was such an idiot back then, I'm so glad for it now.

Our lives, how we build them, are a mandala. You create them to your satisfaction, and whim, then admire them, and finally wipe them away. And begin again. Accidents along the way, miracles, mistakes, good fortune or fate: I know the difference seperating them all, but I can not for the life of me see it.

The avoided DUI showed me that if there is a God, He sure does love a fool. The redhead, and many others have taught me that a woman can do the same. The redhead and I are now great friends, the eleven hundred miles between us helps, despite even worse events, accidents, mistakes, and miracles. If you decide to call it fate, call it wreckless fate.

I do not mean to come aawy from this as: I hit a girl and it was OK. It wasn't OK. I was not let off the hook or otherwise overlooked. I was forgiven. And only in that way do I consider myself lucky. This, though unlike (and just like), the DUI was one of many instances in my life where I had the oppurtunity to experience one of the many facets of life. Some are good and some are evil, this one being very dark and awful, and I got walk away from it, not exactly with impunity, but without life destroying consequences that are often attached and often deserved. We'll call it mercy.

And as I move and stumble through this life and the streets of sioux falls where I'm attacked by birds and applauded as Columbo by strangers (think being famous in japan) and with idiot hands build my current mandala and try in my way to piece all this together to decide where I invest my love and faith, which I find the more unwieldy of the two, and not just where these these two things lie-whether it be with some God, or woman, or whatever and it all in general and even with myelf, not only whether love or faith exists in me, but how much do I reserve, and how much do I give, and to whom or what...?

As I naively try to grasp these simple concepts for myself I am able to be showered with hugs and kisses, to breath the free air, to not be locked up in a cage, because those of whom, all of them, regardless of if I believe in all of them or not, that I mentioned above have simply and unasked for already and easily gave me their love and faith. I have never gotten away with anything. And when I take all this for granted, as I am oft to do, it is because these good, good beings let me.

And trust me when I say this will eventually connect to the girl with the cute face and the gorgeous tits that I came to hate.

tune in next week for:
"cute face, gorgeous titties: two things I thought I would never come to hate"
part 2: "and there is this other girl I smacked up real good.

"the ragin' cajun, and the sorry southerner"

2004-04-05T21:59:00.000-04:00

I grew up in Cumming, GA a suburb of Atlanta. After high school I moved in with this beautiful artist from North Carolina. After, I think, three years of being together I properly and pretty methodically fucked it up for myself. Se la vi. Then I moved to Atlanta. It was something I had always wanted to do, which stems from my father. He came to me on the reservation in Cherokee, NC. I was fifteen. I hadn't seen him since I was too young to remember. All I knew was that he was Indian, and that he'd abused my mama. He woke me up and asked if I knew who he was. I didn't. He told me. I jumped down and (i was on the top bunk of my cousin's bunk beds) hugged him. I didn't know what else to do. I was terrified of him. I was uncomfortable around him. I didn't want him to go away. I wanted him to reveal something to me. I wanted him to turn me into something. Into anything but some awkward, confused half-breed. I drove around with him and his leather clad, chain-smoking white woman. We played basketball at the campgrounds with my Indian cousins. He told me many things, like that he was going to move near by and we'd see more of each other. If I wanted I could live with him in the Summer. I told him lies. Lies about my childhood, and how cool it was, how happy it was. We have that in common. I lie well. We also have great hair and intense eyes. We also read a lot. We also have problems settling down. (i have brothers and sisters I've never met. none of us have the same mothers. at that meeting i was the youngest of his offspring. i don't know if that has changed) One of the things he told me, after asking what I want to do after high school and after I told him I might like to live in Atlanta (me and my mother both share a love and admiration and comprehensive knowledge of Martin Luther King, Jr. ["do not follow in the footsteps of the masters, instead seek what they sought"]), was "Why do you want to that? I lived in Atlanta. It's nothing but a bunch of niggers and spics." He left the next day with the all around leathery white woman, and promised me a return. He gave me a choker and a medicine stick. He makes these things out of real, sacred material. He sells them to white tourists. I lost the gifts over time. I cherished and worshipped them. I have not seen him since. After high school, after the beautiful artist I moved to Atlanta.

For the next few years I made friends with many niggers, spics, and throw in some faggots, skater kids, graffiti artists, chinks, dykes, kieks--freaks. Good people. My people. I was a health nut for a while. A drunk, pill poppin, coke snortin, pussy gettin', book learnin'--name it, name it, name it--for a longer while. There was a stolen car, there were guns... There was a lot of fun and good proper trouble had. Add in a couple of nice, yet, still failed relationships.

Then the bug came. I needed a change. I love Atlanta, honest I do, but only when I'm not there or if a friend is in town and has never been to the ATL. I needed new adventures in strange lands. I went to New Orleans to become a better writer. Obviously I failed. There was no work to sustain myself, and the night life, well, it's New Orleans. The night didn't just call to you it showed up at your front door with drinks, pills, dirty rice, and powders. And a jazz band that only played "When the Saints Come Marching In", each time better than the last. But in the end you have to pay the price and tip the band.

I was broke. A cute little redheaded girl I knew from Atlanta wired me some money. I packed my things and left New Orleans with my tail between my legs, and my heart hung heavy with failure. And in turn I left with more baggage in tow than I had come with.

But if you go to N'awlins stay for more than two weeks, but don't go anywhere near Bourbon St during Mardi Gras. Unless you're a yuppie, frat boy, or an ugly chick it's just not worth it.
Back in GA I got a job bartending at Loco's Deli and Pub. It is a lame place, an unhappy place, but I made a lot of money. Which is exactly how much it took for me to wear their gay-ass t-shirts with a drunken moose logo on it. It's GA! Why a moose? Why a drunk, or retarded which is what it actually looked like, moose? I made enough to pay the redhead back and move to Athens with some very old and good friends of mine. Fun was had, and it was there that I decided to write the novel that I came here, to Sioux Falls, to complete.

A quick side note (as if all this weren't some big side note): It was also in this time I met Emily Windham, the only friend I shall name outright as she'll come up again and again. And for all practical reasoning I should be in love with her (not that I'm not[not that i am]), married with babies that would grow up to be awesome and strong and smart and have big eyes, perfect skin and curly hair. All my friends say this and I agree. But though I am a practical man I am not the most conventional.

In Athens I realized that I'm not getting any younger. I've spent years as an all-talk wannabe writer. Enough is enough. If it can be said that I let Emily get away it's because I knew (know) that I was (am) not worth it (of value, source of pride) for any girl, any woman outside of a casual relationship. This probably is one of the most mature understandings defining my adult life. And because of this realization there is another woman I let get away. Or rather I walked away from, rather I drove away from to come here. Remember at the end of any little stage you go through it eventually comes time to pay the price. And there's always that band to tip. More on Athens later.

tune in next time for "cute face, gorgeous titties: two things i thought i would never come to hate"

AND I'M ALREADY BESIDE THE POINT

2004-04-04T22:46:00.000-04:00

"But all this-the mysterious, the far-reaching hair-line trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all-made no impression on the young man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a newcomer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination."
- jack london
"to build a fire"

I'm not a Jack London fan. Least ways I'm not a "Call of the Wild" fan. Bored me to tears. The quote is ripped off of someone who ripped it off. Aside from middle school curriculum the only other Jack London experience I've had was on the long road home from Savannah, GA where me and my life long friend Ian got drunk as monkeys and ran across rooftops like The Tick, and made beautiful women that look like Uma Thurman mad at us. On the road home we refused to acknowledge how late in the day it was and the many hours and miles we had still yet to endure. We talked lightly and listened to NPR. There was a story being read by some actor. It was a short story, by London, about a captain who believed luck always favored the side against him. In sunny clear skies and calm waters he muttered curses to all, and became hornery in hopes that "the forces" would take notice of how unhappy this weather makes him and further spite him with it. Conversely when storms closed in and threatened the very lives of all on board, even the captain, he would laugh and regail at such fine, fine weather; here to parch your thirst and give you reprieve from the sun's heat.
London summed up this character as a man with strong belief in his God, but was a devil worshipper at heart and did not realize it.
None of this matters. The only part of this blog that has anything to do with the mission of this blog is the quote up top. It made me think of me this winter past and how not too productive I've been. I'm still working on the same short story and still getting ready to begin the novel I set out to write. I did fine at the end of summer and through out fall about when I first landed here, but then winter set in and you would think that being isolated in one room would leave much time and focus for writing. Of course you would think that. It's easy to blame the weather, though. That's what made me think of London's story and Savannah. That's the only connection. In fact if I gave much regard to blogs and blogging at all I'd cut the whole fucking thing out. But I am a lazy man.
Having brought that long stretch of nothing betwixt Savannah and Atlanta up I have to say that that drive reminds me of the drive here, to Sioux Falls. Flat, slightly rolling. Nothing for as far as the eye can see, like being in the middle of the ocean. It's this vast calm sea of dirt, grass, and cornfield or wheatfield. And it is tranquill if you don't talk about home. And it's beautiful as long as you don't describe it, or as long as I don't describe it.
But...I'm not there yet in this blog o'mine. I haven't made it to the land locked port-town of Sioux Falls yet.
Looking at the first entry I can tell you I got it all wrong. I mis-spoke. I mistook these people or at least a few of them. But that's later too. That was after the winter when I shook off the devil's grip. I came to Sioux Falls, South Dakota September Seventh. On my birthday. I'm not even one years old here, yet. Don't listen to me.
But this is getting too long for one entry. Tune in next time for "the ragin' cajun, and the sorry southerner".

Blog The First

2004-03-21T01:20:00.000-05:00

It's my first time so this is going to be long and tedious. Now that I've made it through my first winter I would like to recount my life so far as the Summer Loving Georgia Boy whose come to this vast and empty Midwestern Plain-Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Why? is the question. "Oh, hi, I just moved here." "Where'd you move from?", they say. "I'm from Atlanta." is my honest reply. "What the hell are you doing here?" they chuckle in all seriousness.

And what the hell am I doing here? By all rights I should never have come to this place with skies so big, and land that ranges out farther than any man can see, but with nowhere to go unless it's out to the Black Hills for nature, or the Twin Cities for rock concerts, decent art, and a ballgame. No one but the absolute poor, the xenophobic, and Indians stick around when a three day weekend comes. Every youth I meet has a plan to run away and a fake tan to blend in once they get there to the Sunny Climes in there dreams. They mistrust me when I say I come from the South after living in Hotlanta, New Orleans and Athens. Of course I understand. You've all looked at the map a few times for a road trip, and glancing over the unheard of cities in states you constantly forget about, and you ask "Who lives there?" Who knows what kind of person you envision, what kind of caricature you come up with. But I'll tell you this, you Gods of Priviledge, they can feel your Eyes on them, the ones that have a notion and mind for the outside world. And they feel a false sense of shame and they despair. They want to break out and I don't blame them. There's nothing here for the ambitious, at least as we know of ambition. And as I see it I am an ambitious person full of hopes and dreams all within my intelligence and ability to seize. I never in my life would've come to such a place. And, yet, here I am. What the hell am I doing in Sioux Falls, South Dakota?