The Malformed Stillborn Opinion Channel

Great Expectations

2009-05-30T23:02:00.000-07:00

Moving. Tonight, tomorrow. Sorry. I haven't updated as much as I'd like, and that's unacceptable. No excuses, only reasons. I've been rather engaged in self-destruction lately, and just haven't had time. No really. My bad karma has been added to at such a disgusting pace, that I wonder that I haven't been plagued with locusts.

I need the world to change. I always have.

Cancer

2009-05-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

I suppose what broke me was this: I gave up more than I ever wanted to. I used to know where to draw the line, how to build Maginot lines. I can't describe how I love her, or her, or her. I can only tell stories. That's all I ever had. I can only measure my love in what I've given for it, and the more I give, the longer it takes for me to exist outside the late night emails, the descriptions of how I've fallen from what I was.

I destroy myself like I was a talisman of love for you. I sully, I desecrate. I fuck till dawn on coke and I don't apologize for transgressions, for the bruises left. I'm a tease and a flirt, an empty vessel. I gave this up for you. I gave up myself, and until there is someone worth my being the innermost, and best, part of myself, I will fuck and drink and pursue reckless emptiness with all the passion that I once showed you, in the early morning, on a single bed in JP. In the common. In the arboretum, when all I could do was hope you didn't see me staring at your ass through my book.

I can only hope that something comes along to bring out that innermost, that best part of myself; or that you come back, or that I finally through sublimation achieve the complete destruction of the good, so that I can live, and fuck, and drink as one not plagued by the gross responsibility of time.

Paris in Winter

2009-05-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

"I bought my first tv set about a week ago. So far I've seen a Nova program about Mars- it was magnificent- and Monday Night Football. Both great."

-John Cheever, 1976

Questions of Importunity

2009-05-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

You searched through my poets
from Sappho through to Auden
I saw the book fall from your hands
as you slowly died of boredom

I feel tired. I'm exhausted. I'm a scientist.

Live it out, walk off the differences and believe for a few minutes. Don't care what it might mean for your dignity. Five months and nevermind. Treat the past like the sterile, dead thing it is. Wake up.

Embrace empty-hearted appeasement, leave be. Cancel subscriptions and take your coffee black. Don't wait until 4 July to shoot your rockets off.

Swine flu, and the increasing meaninglessness of fear. I just want to thank you for going insane.

Encode the difference in how you hold your cigarette. A little less expectation. A little more fancy free, a little more fanatic fantasy. A little more alliterative alteration; memory becomes narrative, memory narrative, and the world gets a little smaller.

My dog

2009-02-27T14:19:00.001-08:00

Tucker died today. He was run over by a car in front of the North Carver Church.
I'm burying him in the front yard with my father.

Lackluster

2009-02-27T00:17:00.000-08:00

I only want to talk to two people right now. One is dead. The other I would give anything to drink a sixpack in the basement of the store with, and then listen to Johnny Quest.

I need my heart rebroken. It didn't set right the last few times.

I am a law of diminishing returns.

It's not that the world is unfair, that's not true. The world is cruel. It's uniformly cruel, and capriciously cruel, but fairness doesn't enter in to it.

Constructions in Time

2009-02-19T13:17:00.001-08:00

It's about how we understand time passing. We have the arrow of time: the measure of an increasing force of entropy, the slow passing of moments and the constriction of freedom, just like a chess board. A complexity of 10 to the 123rd power gets wittled down, each move consigning each player to fewer and fewer choices.

We decide ourselves in the same way, our freedom of movement growing smaller and smaller until we are patterns, automatons whose only remaining move is to die.

We repeat our actions, call it personality. We consign ourselves to the dustbin of psychohistory, we become our own explanation. We lose our inscrutability.

Did you know that I haven't ever really fallen out of love? Not that I've fallen in love so many times as to leave a bevy of unfulfilled desires in the back of my mind, but that I don't know how one switches it off- I don't know where they go, these loves that once were; mine linger and stink up the place.

All I want is freedom of motion- and the opportunity for my actions to be those of an inscrutable agent- and I don't see either of those things happening in this world.

I want something new, and I won't stop being a complete jackass until I find it.

Great,

2009-02-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

Xala.

That's it. That's the entire entry.

Creepy enough for you yet?

A brand new and exhaustive update

2009-02-15T23:16:00.001-08:00

So 12 things to bring to our attention, and then we'll move on to the random videos and ranting about how awful I am.

1. I went to competition in Pittsburgh, PA. I think I did an awful job. Others disagree. But on the bright side, I now have a billion barista related things to do, my head is exploding with possibilities. This is why I compete, though getting to Finals would've been nice. So would going to the USBC. But ultimately it comes down to connecting with people who are on the same page as I am.

2. I can't really decide how to count the mistakes I've made over the past month. I've made plenty, and thankfully, most are without consequences. I've also made some good decisions, like not going home with a fucking junkie, and, um, well, that's what comes to mind.

3. I have fallen in love with MGMT. And now I've fallen out of love with them. I might decide to obsess about Airborne Toxic Event next, but then again, I also really love the Black Keys' Attack and Release.

4. I was really freaking myself out about multi-dimensional spaces and objects, and the possibility of 3-dimensional objects occupying mutually unobservable yet similar positions within a 4-dimensional space. Thankfully, a 4-dimensional Earth would seem to seriously fuck with our understanding of mass and gravity-

but then again, in this I think I'm pulling the Descartes thing of thinking something uncomfortable can't be true. Or maybe the Conzett thing, in that a complex understanding of something simple is really just bull.

5. Wow, art students, except for K-Robs, are really the least interesting people on the planet. A quick gloss on my understanding- art is craft, it is an expression of an understanding of the world around us- an understanding that cannot be taught. Art students are like Marshal McLuhan books, all medium and no context or content.

6. But they are amusing.

7. Xala is a pretty amazing person, most of the time. Especially when that time is watching zombies beat themselves up at windows, or when listening to me bitch about trisha, or when eating vietnamese food.

8. I probably deserve the emptiness of a kynthia-free world. I probably don't deserve the grace of a trisha-free world. This is unhelpful information, now.

9. I am now interested in the problem of Palettes. This concerns competition, espresso, and I don't blame you if you skip to ten, which will be far more entertaining and sexy. So palettes- at competition, I was told that competitors smoke, and that judges don't, and this causes a rift in palettes. Smokers prefer darker roasted coffees that have fewer bright or citrus-y notes- what I think of grapefruitiness; Judges entirely go for the bright and fruity notes. So how is this? How does this work? I was told that it might be a matter of similar tastes, that because smoking is a back palette activity, because it's so back of the mouth, deep in the nasal cavity, that coffees that appeal to the same senses would be preferred to those that don't. I wonder, though, if it is a sense-compensation issue. Imagine that smoking inhibits a certain amount of taste sensation at the back of one's palette; then imagine, that like a blind man's hearing, the front of the palette becomes more sensitive. So sensitive that what were subtle citrus or dried fruit notes become grapefruit assaults? I don't know, but I think this is an area of exploration for the guys at Barismo and I to undertake.

10. Oh shit, that's right, I'm now friends with the guys over at Barismo. Jaime and Ben are pretty awesome coffee geeks, and i can't wait to go hang out at the roastery.h

11. I am really grateful to work at 1369. I am really grateful to have trained with alison and nathaniel. I am so proud of Nathaniel, and I can't wait for NERBC 2010.

12. And valentines day with Xala kicked valentines day with poopy mcbitchypants ass.

and videos!

And now pictures from a movie you haven't seen. That is probably in French.

I am already in love with you if you know what other movie I'd post a still from.

"To be or not to be. That's not really a question."

Every single thing we do in this life

2009-01-28T00:59:00.000-08:00

is at someone's expense. Get over it. Every action, while not necessarily being selfishly motivated, comes at the expense of another. There are reasons, and there are results, and the results always involve someone suffering. Once again, suck it up.

I apologize often enough, sincerely enough, to the point that now I apologize with quite enough gusto to blow out a few candles. Birthday?

But I don't inhabit the past.

The past is a narrative that informs my actions, but does not explain them. I try to coexist with my passions, rather than steer them. I try to feel as much and as
potently as I can, and then I try and explain it to others. I don't want sympathy.

I do want to bang some chicks.

Grief isn't shameful. Anger isn't shameful. Jubilation and ennui are not shameful.

I find it the saddest thing, people who can cry, but cannot give any other voice to their emotions. People who say the same things and do the same things, over and over again, all the while prating about the last time. Tell me something wonderful. Tell me how it felt watching a spade bite into grass and loam. Tell me how it felt to scatter ashes. Tell me how it felt to breathe on his or her skin, and what shade of purple her camisole was, and what type of eyes you lose yourself in.

Tell me who you have buried, tell me who you have banged. Because in the end all we are is a loose collection of facts, centered around some animating principle that gives us narrative, life.

And don't you for a second ever thing you have done a goddamn thing on this planet that hasn't caused tears. Because every choice we make, in this life, is at the expense of another.

Thank god Jules et Jim was on tv tonight.

2009-01-25T23:39:00.000-08:00

The Oracle of Delphi

"I have no patience for people," she said. Her face was animated, pulling back as she said that, as if to disown the words as they dropped into air.

"Intelligence, curiosity, devotion, love, these are things we look for in dogs." And she drank, at least half of the gin and tonic in front of her.

"It is our nature to love at distances, the closer we come are to something, the more effort it takes to love it. Loving yourself requires the most effort of all." And she started staring at my half finished bourbon.

The waitress came by, and left, neither noticing nor caring about the young ladies empty glass. And I excused myself to go to the bathroom.

"Will you quit smoking?" She asked as I came back, and began to put on my jacket. My hand found the disused coaster, and placed it on top of my drink. My hands felt slick with sweat and my feet were tired.

"I think I see your point." I said.

Further Instructions from the Godhead

2009-01-23T00:05:00.000-08:00

I started writing something long and nostalgic, but then I realized that all the things I'm nostalgic for, I'd kill myself if I actually had to live through again.

So instead of the Remembrance of Things Past, I'd like to just reiterate- I am grateful, grateful to be here, and grateful to be writing like I'm meant to-

I'm grateful because I'm talented, and well-loved by good people. I'm grateful for the Alethea Pants, and for Scott Hart's patience. I'm thankful for Xala's humor, and Kelly Robinson's ability to see the world as not nearly as old as it is. I'm grateful for my parents, for my dad's stories, and my mom's understanding. I'm grateful for my brother; we haven't been nearly as good to eachother as either of us deserve, but we have plenty of time to figure it out.

I'm grateful to have had 14 years of living with my brother Aaron, and 25 years of knowing my Grandmother, who is still the most spectacular woman I will ever know. She worked for sixty years straight, raised her sisters and brothers, and then raised my mother and her sisters, and finished it off by being Grammy to all of us grandchildren and great grandchildren.

I'm grateful for my new sister, and my new nieces. I'm grateful that they make my parents young again.

I'm grateful for the store, and the people who call Inman Square home, and Inman Square itself. I have never known a better place- and it will be a sad day that I leave it for good.

I miss a lot of people on that list. I'm sorry about that.

I'm pretty much an asshole, most of the time. I'm not sorry about that.

And I am not happy, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.

Happyness is how you know you're being a sucker.

It turned out to be a good night

2009-01-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

Despite everything. The second one in a row. I mean, I've had some pretty good days, give or take, in the past week. But two really good nights in a row? I feel graced. Last night, I saw Jesse Gallagher's (of Apollo Sunshine) Quartet play at the Middle East upstairs. Really fantastic music, and for a moment, I thought "Jeez, Trisha would really like this." Before my mind navigated away from the thought, for the most part harmlessly. I then went up to the Druid to have a pint with Snowball, which is always a good scene. I'm glad I got Snowball in the break, really glad that the square, which seemingly had taken to Trisha better than it had me, has stayed pretty much on my side. So snowball, Mike and I had a pint, and we marveled at Mike's drawings, and his awesome well of talent. I told Mike to hold me to next week as a deadline to finish the novella, which has gone from working title Symposium to working title Post Hoc, The Great Plains, and Fallacy. I think I'm going to settle with Post Hoc until I get some feedback.

The novella? It's going well, when I can focus my energies on it. It's a cutting and pasting process at this point, though I still have one major part to write. It's something I've lied and been silent upon for more than a year, but now everyone who matters knows.

Well, Xala knew well before now, but a different version of the same events. Speaking of which, tonight I hung out with Shannon and Xala, and Shannon's boyfriend Greg, and we played Singstar, which was an awful exercise for someone as tone-deaf as I am, and drank some, and then I drove back to Carver, back to Boring-as-Shit-town.

Things could've been worse.

Now I'm going to take some Vicodin and fly into sleep.

The difference between guilt and shame is that we only feel guilt to an equal measure as delight, we only feel guilt in the amount we feel pleasure at having transgressed. Shame is pleasure-less. If I felt anything, it was only ever guilt, commensurate with great delight.

Elaborations

2009-01-19T22:26:00.000-08:00

I was CC'd on an email promoting this blog, just the other day, and was amazed that my publicist, the incomparable David Marshall, thinks of this site as "Personal Rants" and it's sister as "Literary Merit." Now barring the fact that I would be in a rare mood to describe anything I do as having literary merit (and it is the rarity of those moods that leads me to proclaim, when I'm in one, my own awesomeness), what struck me as interesting is that this site is given over to personal rants. Now, this isn't about ranting. This is about exploring in prose the phenomenon I encounter in day to day existence. Not a diary, as a diary is less planned, and everything I write here is planned, and (poorly) edited.

Now. After saying that, I have to prove it. So here is a post Trisha free. Whole new years resolution, and that. So I am going to give brief overviews of the writers that interest me right now, and why they interest me.

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

Ostensibly a book on the consequential, improbably, unpredictable event, this book ends up being a philosophical treatise of a rare breed- it actually has an application for decision making. Most philosophy, these days, is either focused on whether or not decisions exist, determining the linguistic implications of decisions, or retroactively justifying decisions because, well shit, one had to do something, even if that something is nothing.

Taleb uses as a starting point a division, between the world that physics, statistics, and probability describe, and the world that defies such description- what acts in a manner predictable, with regular distribution, and what doesn't. From here, Taleb takes us on a tour of ways we confuse, and mis-inform ourselves, by thinking all of our world fits predictable models. He takes a dash to the problem of induction, but mostly focuses on the inadequacy of predictive models- basically he holds that we don't have the math to predict events, while we continuously think we do.

Where I think Taleb gets interesting, however, is on the topic of cause and effect, what he calls the "narrative fallacy." Any given effect has an infinitude of causes, and that it is in our nature to overlook this fact, and focus on a single cause. Because we think backwards, we think that things like Pearl Harbor, and the Stock Crash in August, were entirely predictable. And people did in fact predict those things- in fact, for every single action through history, someone has probably predicted it- but if you have a large enough population of speculators, one will be right, regardless of their level of expertise. In retrospect, we call these people "visionaries," when all of their incorrect compatriots also were visionary. We should merely call those accurate predictors "lucky.

Strident and repetitive, Taleb is interesting, and provacative, to the point of being totally inconsequential. Which is, ultimately, our loss.

Iain M. Banks Matter

Iain Banks writes claustrophobic, confused literary fiction that funnels the reader into small, small people with their small, small tragedies and sins. Iain M. Banks, the very same author, with an addition of a middle initial, writes expansive space opera, dripping with socio-political commentary, all structured around character stories decompressed from Shakespeare and shaped to a galactic scale.

In which case, this book is Banks stealing from Hamlet and Titus Andronicus, a family tragedy, siblings striving for vengeance, exiles and ghosts, in a novel that takes every opportunity afforded it in this maligned limb of fiction to reflect back on itself, to afford every opportunity for a spark of wit or a clever inversion. Banks is quality.

Jules Renard Journals

The back of my copy says that Susan Sontag once gave this book to someone, who gave it to someone else. Doubtless someone with a PhD would recognize either of those two somebodies. Me, I just flipped through it to know I wanted it. Renard's journals are not diaries. They are sketchbooks, quick pictures framed in prose, most of which are dead ends, some of which may have grown in his imagination to have become the novels that now no one reads.

What's interesting about Renard is not who has read him, but what he hasn't written. Every page has a dozen good, abandoned ideas. It's probably the most inspiring graveyard I've ever seen.

So that's what I'm reading. Yes, I know I'm brilliant. I squander potential like you throw away candy wrappers.

In case you were wondering

2009-01-17T22:52:00.000-08:00

my new years resolution was to expend no more effort on a failed enterprise.

And to not quit smoking.

Things we've lost

2009-01-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

I save a lot. I try and hunt down missing memories and hope to give them all the power and beauty that they initially had. I'm writing down everything, every single thing no matter how damning it might be to me or her, and it's helping. Every day is a little bit easier. In The Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche wrote that we only have words for that is already dead in our hearts- and it is along those lines that I'm writing, writing, writing as much as possible to get all of this out of my head, out of my heart. Did she blame me for not getting into Harvard? I cannot say. I cannot say what the difference between her playing 23 games of freecell in a row, after getting the Harvard news and quitting her job, and my playing solitaire all day long through november because my voice died. I can't write cause and effect, I can't draw conclusions, and I cannot use this particular past as a guide to the future. But I can write what I knew happened. These things happened and they were beautiful and they meant something.

Every day I try and balance the part of me that winces with every familiarity and every ghost of remembered embraces, and its constant screaming for vengeance- and the desire to honor what happened, how I behaved and how she loved, with all due diligence. Making every effort to enshrine this heart as an artifact of what had happened, however briefly.

We are foolish people and our past mocks us.

idanceliketaffy: you are you beautiful.
idanceliketaffy: i cannot imagine you not being by my side.
idanceliketaffy: i adore you.

***update***

idanceliketaffy: it isn't just lip service.
idanceliketaffy: it isn't just to placate someone else.
idanceliketaffy: or say something because that is what you're supposed to say.

It's been a month. Healing is a sucker's game.

Nostalgia

2009-01-09T10:45:00.000-08:00

It's just stuff really, and it can set me off mid-sentence. A rearrangement of stuff is needed. These unprompted Via Dolorosa need to stop- these freighted objects that mysteriously appear in my way between the hopeful morning and shivering midnight. These happenstance sufferings of radio and silence.

Adam's Curse
WB Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'

. . . . . . . . . And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, 'To be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful.'

I said, 'It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

I miss grocery shopping. I miss all the crap she'd buy. I am 26 living in my parents basement with no higher skills than the ones I employ as I write this and I live also amongst the discarded shoes of my former love, or not really former, but of my love, that is no longer mine; I attempt to write this poison out of my system as quickly and often as I can, the misplacement of that damn augustana song may require hundreds of words to displace in my mind, and heaven forbid I have a swedish fish in my pocket. I told the lady down the street she needn't give me them anymore- I just throw them out now. I once texted a bit of the poem above to her. To be honest, I had sent or quoted that poem, incompletely, at plenty of girls before then, and yet only she got back to me with the following lines. And that had to do with a little part of my loving her. It's nostalgia. It's nausea, needless and noxious.

And then it's the dreams. I dream Brideshead. I dream over and over again. I dream a story that begins on a drive to New Hampshire with a call and I do not stop dreaming it. I wake and choke back tears and curl myself tight and will myself to sleep, will it so hard my eyelids hurt and my back shivers like a coil, break myself back into sleeping again. And if that doesn't work, theres always Chapter 7 waiting like a spider, it's fangs dripping. You just alight on that web an you're stuck.

I crave silence and dreamless nights.

Gestures.

2009-01-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

It starts with four paintings, hung two by two at right angles, but really, one single piece. Let's call it "Eraser," with a slight pun, unintended, when you break the syllables after the 's'. It starts with four paintings that used to be the beginnings of a thought, an ill-thought mishmash of inadequate attempts. A gesture, sterile, but meaningful. Now a gesture, pregnant, but meaningless. Contextually meaningful, but empty of information otherwise.

See, it's about choices. It's about narrative. The empty statement of facts- meaningless gestures constructed in a linear fashion to become a history of what we were; the choices of interpretation.

There are no causes but the causes we make for ourselves, and these are often either random choice or consoling lies. We do and we don't, and then lie to ourselves to absolve us of having done or not done whatever we did: the reason comes after the action. It is post hoc ergo proper hoc.

So, empty gestures become meaningful because the witnesses to these gestures ascribe causes to them- the viciousness of a hurt animal, the emptiness of an ill-lit basement room, these become nodes in a narrative, and so we build a story around the harmless movement of particles in a vacuum, the soulless rearrangement of objects.

See, it's about narrative. It's about the lies we tell ourselves to keep going; or the lies we tell to tear ourselves limb from fucking limb.

Is it

2009-01-04T21:36:00.001-08:00

a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, or just heartbreak?

I'm moving.

2009-01-02T16:06:00.000-08:00

4 days till I move for the sixth time in a little more than a year.

Thats a depressing thought

Revisions

2009-01-01T20:42:00.000-08:00

Nope, 2009 just as shitty as 2008. I'm a goddamn mess.

two oh oh fine

2009-01-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

Brand new year, and a whole lot to forget before it's done. Hope you all have a good one. Me, I'm hoping for streaks in the sky sooner rather than later.

It's not the End of the World as We Know It. It's just the end.

2008-12-31T10:15:00.000-08:00

The Rock n Roll equivalent of snake-handlers, O'Connor's good men so hard to find, apocalyptic visions with the contempt for a fallen world, they make YHWH out to be the badass of the old testament, and they, reveal the world we live in as the stink and the diddy; a world in which Christ's sacrifice is little more than a gesture, a raised middle finger to humanity's ability to lie, cheat and murder.

In a world where the only heroes are as monstrous as their nemeses, Achilles all, with Hector's body dragged through the mud, where the only interceding angel is a Stagger Lee and "four holes in the mother-fucking head," the very concept of divine grace becomes inverted, salvation is death, and divine grace a psychopath with a gun.

These men of God, these scourges released onto an unsuspecting world nevertheless deserving of this tribulation, these men are the Judge of Blood Meridian, the Iagos of a fallen planet, the Caliban in this tempest of sin, and Prospero is either entirely missing, or else he is one bad motherfucker, and pissed as shit at whoever woke him.

This is not a world where tribulation and rapture are some dates in the future, as meticulously planned as weddings, but one in which tribulation is a rapist on the loose, and rapture comes at the end of a gun.

lies lies lies

2008-12-29T18:12:00.001-08:00

Monument

2008-12-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

three packs of cigarettes. twenty apiece that makes sixty, makes sixty hours I can keep this up, between six pack and bottle of wine means one beer for 10 cigarettes, which in turn means 1.12 oz of beer per hour, and then also allowing for 12.5 mL of wine, which when converted from metric becomes 0.4228 oz. On a little more than an espresso shot worth of fluid I can finish this I can write this hour by hour until I go back to work again.

See, it's a problem of scale. There's the underlining problem, the one that starts off with a feeling of listlessness in the afternoon, and by evening theres the obsessive, the compulsive need - to break down, to talk, to shout, to scream, or just to hit the refresh button on this until it bears some relevancy in this world, at this time. It won't. I'm pretty sure about that. But back to the problem of scaling. My solution to the underlying problem is to go to the druid, and I simply cannot scale this up to deal with every night. I can write in this blog, which is a poor attempt at not going to the druid, and I could probably call someone. None of this satisfactory. Right now, nothing helps me to sleep more than eight or nine guinness. Less than that are the optimistic dreams, waking up in disappointment, or the confusing ones, waking up to an overwhelming sense of doom. This all sounds dramatic, doesn't it? This all sounds like, well, what did you expect?

I am better than this, better than these nights of spilled out talent, better than these nights of obsessive paralysis, better than this desperation. It was easier to be better than this, once. Even small gestures betray me. Just don't make me beg.

Half in the Shadows

2008-12-24T10:39:00.000-08:00

I crossed into a valley, a valley so dark, then when I looked back, I can't see where I began. I can't see my hands; I don't even know if my eyes are open.

I feel like I should be at the druid right now.

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You know, a year and a half ago, I wouldn't have thought that any of this was possible.

A year and a half ago I was between JP and Cambridge. A year and half ago -

I still need to wrap presents.

Christmas Wishes.

2008-12-23T09:39:00.001-08:00

New post also on the sister blog.

Well, technically, three new posts. And it needs editing. But some people need to know that despite the soul-killing nature of living with them I am capable of producing - well, crap. I hope you all get hit by buses.

A Rejuvenation of Will

2008-12-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

I guess that pretty much sums it up.

The Miserable Return of the Triumphant Blog

2008-12-21T12:35:00.000-08:00

(Or starting over on no new footing, really no footing whatsoever.)

A soundtrack for this holiday season:
Mountain Goats - Game Shows Touch Our Lives
Wrens - Happy
Nick Cave - Gates to the Garden
Replacements - Unsatisfied

Then stay in doors for three days with nothing but a molding pot of soup.

And all the life you thought you had will shudder and fade like old film stock.

What was the point here?

2008-07-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

I REALLY DON'T KNOW.

I would much prefer to be watching Iron Man right now.

Well, I could always commuter rail from home. That doesn't sound like a gigantic sucking chest wound at all. Gurgle Gurgle Hack Spit.

I think that everyone should read Omega Minor by Paul Verhaegen. It's really good, and smutty. Michel Houllebecq is also really good and smutty. I'd suggest reading Platform first, and the Possibility of an Island. Arthur and George by Julian Barnes was quite delightful, and it should have been, the man plays snooker with Amis, of course.

I never quite know what you people, if you're even out there, make of this scattershot performance, this themeless dribble of effluence and that is why, for most of the time, in fact, for almost all the time, I just shut the fuck up, or blabber on about nothing at all, like how my life is this constant crumbling wall, that I do nothing to patch up, I'm no little boy with his finger holding back the Zederzee, oh lord no, I just let it fucking crumble and am amazed that there is anything left. It is some reverse Sisyphean torture, where instead of rolling the boulder uphill all day, I more or less hold my head under water and refuse to drown. Perhaps this all seems a little melodramatic. But I would just rather be sleeping right now.

Love,
Z

blammo

2008-06-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

I miss trisha. yep.

Blah blah blah. Are you happy yet?

The only thing worth doing right now is reading something good (preferably with Nazis and physicists) and writing something better (also with nazis and physicists, and invisible bombs and hot detective ladies) so I can justify my girlfriend being the hot and brilliant woman she is.

I spend a lot of money at Blockbuster, and less at the Druid, than would befit my character. I'm sleepwalking to July 13th.

Love,
Z

obsession

2008-03-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

Things that happened

2008-02-29T10:00:00.000-08:00

in the last evening:
Worked at Central for an hour or so
Drove Kelly R home
Moved the last of my stuff out of my brothers
Met Alethea at Sunset with Trisha, and saw the hugest ice cream cake/pie ever
Drove to Maine
Got lost in Ogonquit
Drove back from Maine
Went around the Portsmouth Traffic Circle appx. 18 times.
Wondered if Scott Hart like Tartar sauce
Drove through Winchester and Arlington
Saw some kid get his ass handed to him by a bunch of asian guys on Harvard Ave.
Dropped Alethea off home
Went home, went to sleep.

And this morning I got donuts!
I am exceedingly active of late.

2008-02-19T18:21:00.000-08:00

I have to update in order to get sex tonight. dammit.

Douchebags for Sale.

2008-02-19T18:19:00.000-08:00

Oh, and Cormac McCarthy is making me wheeze blood from all of my crude openings. I heart the ululating heart of my beloved.

Another fucking update.

2008-02-19T18:11:00.000-08:00

So I updated. Boo, midwest, boo.

And here I dreamt I was on Stage

2007-11-25T20:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new life, and what a carnival cracked ride it is, clamming up with consonance at the merest sign of stuffiness, we build ourselves up to be worth the time self-destructing.

The calls progress everyday, marching like cellphone drum beats to an unseen chorus, an apartment, life, disappeared into hollow ground, that slow sucking chest-wound, hemorrhaging money on beer and unpaid bills, spills and coasters not-withstanding.

You want to know your options and you coo over them like asian babies in photos for adoption, protection money gleaming it's wicked way through pants pockets to make a batsignal towards . . . what?

I know this all may seem trite to you, like the elaborate paintings of Dali, to be interpreted with a snap of the wrist or without eyeglasses.

Philip Roth in his stained boxers with wine libels demands it. He and I stand here demanding judgement, because we just can't wait much longer. Give us our weight, our measurement, and nothing so meaningless as two pounds of flesh, I'm not jewish anyway.

I'm not judging you, I'm judging me.

DAMMIT!

2007-11-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

The World as We Know It

2007-11-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Eve, the day before, and I have a dozen chores to do. I started writing a couple of posts last night, but that got superseded by a certain love of my life calling from the chilly midwest.

My world as I know it? The apartment situation is breaking down and the only solution is to throw money at it, which I am doing with abandon. At some point, things will be even and I can settle back into normal, at least until January, when I fly out to the QC to begin a brand new chapter on my life, and one that I am intensely looking forward to. As of last thursday, it's been 3 months since I first kissed Trisha, and a week before that, we had been dating for two months, and I have never been so happy, so assured of anything in my life. It's strange and exciting, wondrous and scary all at once, and all I can hope for is that I can be the person who deserves this amazing person, that I can hold up my end of this, the best relationship I've ever been in. I have a sexy, brilliant girlfriend, who is immensely generous and giving, thoughtful, considerate, and one of the cleverest people I know. I am endlessly fascinated by her.

I am rambling, I know, but right now, I have it better than I ever have, and all I can do is try to be as humbly grateful as I can, which isn't very easy for me.

It was a long, tawdry winter that I stumbled out of when this girl found me, and I cannot give thanks enough.

We move in together in January. And I couldn't be happier.

Trisha, I love you. I love you.

2007-11-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

Saw Eric and Lach last night, always a good scene.

I miss my ladylove.

How I feel today

2007-11-07T11:01:00.001-08:00

So I have this thing I am supposed to be doing for work, but I am getting easily distracted.

I am tired and cranky. I woke up with a headache, looking for someone who wasn't there. Just a couple more months before she's here, and in my arms, and I know I'm getting soft-hearted, but fuck off.

How many more videos of children getting kicked in the face do I have to post here?

the Further Travails of No One in Particular

2007-11-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

"Whitey's Ice Cream has been called the "Best in the Midwest" by readers of the Midwest Living Magazine"

Most annoying thing ever.

2007-11-03T08:50:00.001-07:00

New stuff

2007-09-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

Out of the west came a hellcat with eyes that shifted and searched, and I'm a taken man now. I live life and every momen is wasted without my midwest beauty by my side. Those of you who know me know I'm not one for sentimentality, no nothing but high melodrama for me, and yet here I am, swooning, in love, and taking such steps as to be the stereotype, the male lover, the letters in the mail and the stolen sighs. Say what you will for this, but it changes everything. Complain, bitch and moan, but all I know is that I feel better now. Yes, I feel better now. Trisha, I love you.

Well, can we both dig it?

2007-09-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Never mind the inevitable fade of the best of boston, that gradual trickle down to Brooklyn. We've got Aletheas and Ingy's, Dudeks and the rest of them. We've got Scott coming in on a greyhound looking haggard and stumbling to the first liquor store we can find. We've got paramours across the country and houses filled with dust and all that remains of last nights party.

I understand if some of my friends hear the siren song and take off, by-the-by, Timmy, you are a dirt-covered whore, but Boston still has enough for me.

A long post, dramatically shortened

2007-09-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

I can't begin to describe the past month and a half. Words don't do the trick, they show up in the morning half-glare as easily as Inman Sq. addicts looking for their fix, but I turn them away just as easily. They just don't fit the tumult in my head. How easily one's world can just be turned around.

All this is to say that maybe, once Scott is here, I can start updating in earnest.

I think only of you . . .

2007-08-25T17:59:00.000-07:00

I wish I could just live the last month over and over, and change nothing but the departure.

Some People Mean More.

2007-07-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

You know what I'm talking about.

I've seen the LORAN station up by Cross Island, looking for all purposes like an alien invasion force, stark towers blinking red deep into the night, and I've seen a thunderstorm barrel it's way across Indiana and I've seen the mountains meet the sea in Alaska. I've seen the cathedrals of Europe and eate4n fried chicken in Georgia. I've driven from one identical mall to the next in California, which helpfully explained all the loonies out there on Venice beach. I've been to Yosemite, Grand Teton, Glacier, Cascades, Tsongas, Volcano, Yellowstone, Badlands, Grand Canyon, and any other National Park you care to mention. I've vomited for three days straight in Germany, and destroyed a drinking contest in Dublin. When I'm not around, I'm probably off devouring worlds. But why should I leave?

Some people are better than others, some people mean more.

Who do you want to trust, me or some other asshole with one hand on the steamwand and the other on a keyboard. You have no trouble with me saying that Arcade Fire is better than Velvet Revolver, but somehow this troubles you?

Some people just mean more.

Some people can make anything better, can make the lamest thing in the world an adventure, and can destroy the bitter distractions.

Now if only Scott were here.

Open the sluice and break the levee.

2007-06-12T09:06:00.000-07:00

12 days of fitful sleep brings you to the outer edge of things, where a raised eyebrow means more than a week of conversation and the last great beautiful thing that you saw was making a bee-line at sixty miles an hour anywhere the fuck away from you. You set the burners to high and leave them till your mind boils over, you build towers so you can see where you've been. You dig tunnels to find the last people who knew you when; you look, look, look desperately and with an honesty that scares your friends for a reset button.

90 miles out and you're wondering how you ever escaped Dorchester, and 90 miles out you're wondering if anything remains back there in the bullshit nights.

90 miles out you're wondering if this is a redemption story or a suicide, and 90 miles out you think of a raised eyebrow.

And eight minutes away, light is escaping a slowly dying star, and eight minutes later, it lands in an eye, under a raised eyebrow, and breaks your fucking heart.

If Allston were burning, would you go down to Mem drive with her and watch the show? you could sit there till dawn and breathe deeply the ashes of that shit town. Everything burns, and nothings redeemed, except for just another suck night in shit city, another bullshit night in the catatonic dread of the afterlife.

Teabagging for Dummies

2007-05-28T20:11:00.000-07:00

Or Douchbagging for Tummies. I don't quite know. It's been a long strange week, and like the Scott says, can we just fuck now?

Seriously. I have a barely remembered conversation about the ultimate dichotomy of the universe being robots vs. zombies with a hot chick friday night and all I really can think about is how much I need some red meat. Her name is Kate Mills. I know her last name and that is literally how far it will ever go. I think I told her I love her.

Saturday night I'm having dinner with a vegetarian, and other than that I just think those shots of rum weren't processed at all that friday night, they just lingered in my system to redrunk me saturday between the third and fourth hour of work. If Xala offered you rum shots, you'd take them too, and don't you fuckin deny it. That girl is cryptonite wrapped in guinness for me, and I don't care that she doesn't like boys.

Seriously, dinner dates with vegetarians are going to be my sixth rung of hell, the one I'd be confined to if you were assigned rank by the frequency of transgressions rather than by the most serious committed. Wait, the sixth is for seed spilling right?

Can I tell you about Heather? Of all the girls who've bought me beer, she is my favorite. "This Year's Model saved my life." "Everyone says that."

I need a steak monster to attack tokyo. And I need Tokyo to be defended by robotic stomachs. And then I need some sappy strings to rise to crescendo while the whole world burns and I'd cry, just fucking cry my fucking eyes out because it'd be just too fucking beautiful.

If you were Scott, you'd know what I was talking about. And if I was Scott, I'd tell you to blow me while I tell you my top five, all-time special effects for time-travel in movies.

But I'm me, so blow me while I make you a latte that'll make your knees weak. Better yet, bend over the counter. Let me tell you I love you.

Big Catholic Guilt

2007-05-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

Out into the light, and out of the darkness. Cleaning and boozing tonight and then tomorrow building an edifice of solipsism, my own forbidden city, all of it dedicated to just how fucking awesome I am. I'm going to drown you in your own vomit, dear reader, I'm going to smother you in words wrapped so tightly around faulty metaphors that the whole putrefied mire of poor prose will suffocate the heavens. You'll see my name in lights dammit. You'll see my name in granite.

The story lines begin here.

It's been a while

2007-04-26T20:30:00.000-07:00

while my own light flickers

Things are building up steam; events are piling up and I'm feeling overwhelmed.

Aaron would be 32 today. Happy birthday. For my own part, I tried to do nothing special, tried to avoid dramatizing the event, tried to feel nothing but ordinary. I went to work, early as it was, and talked to meghan on my way. We're moving in together and I'm scared shitless. But really, how many options do I have at this point?

Work went by and suddenly kynthia was there and I had my Pynchon book handy and we sat, and then we went to look at an apartment she's thinking of moving into. By nightfall I was exhausted. I headed home. On the drive, I kept changing the radio station, looking for something to distract me. Marshfield came up and the salt marsh air blanketed the highway, the smell of beach and the mild drizzle. Etc.

I got home and felt more alone than I have in years. So much for feeling ordinary.

10 years. A decade older and nothing to show for it but wagered hopes and misplaced dreams, waystations along a pointless drive towards mediocrity, losing interest in even the most vivid things, I repeat myself more often now.

don't try and hold nothing.

Photos from NERBC

2007-04-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

What's the frequency, douchebag?

2007-04-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

Heading back up to the city now. Looking for apartments. Barista competition was awesome, and Nick Cho is my hero. Scott is missed, and Allan is home. Oh, and my mom is a blogger now. HA.

If I could, I would light you on fire with my eyes.

going

2007-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

Will be in Pennsylvania for the next 4 days. Will post extensively latter this evening. BALLS.

The Birth of Tragedy

2007-03-09T18:26:00.000-08:00

I forgot just how much I love Song Islands by the Microphones, but then I walked down to the 9's the other night and Xala was playing it and it was "The Moon" and a lot of nostalgia just crashed down on me.

I got an espresso machine from work this week, and it makes me happy. Alec is gone from the 9's and it just is a little disappointing. Allan comes back to Boston soon, and I am anticipating his arrival with eager hands in the wallet and thoughts of bars he's never been to and books I've been reading that just maybe he's read to, and it really is uite something to hold on to a friendship from so far back and it really is quite something that for all the bad blood in my little post-FA circle, he and I are without and cause for concern.

Have you heard this one track off that album I mentioned earlier? It's called "Lanterns" and it sounds like a zombie movie heard from the inside of a keg, a keg of despair and loathing and hope and emptiness.

I'm gonna go dick around on the guitar until work now.

(An) Alternate Route to Vulcan St.

2007-02-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

So where were you when the temps broke 40 this winter?

Me, I was soaking up the negativity at 1369. Or maybe I was apartment hunting with Meg. I don't quite remember. I'll tell you one thing I do remember, and it was chatting with hot kelly on a porch in brighton. I'll tell you one other thing, and that's this

Somewhere in the middle there I was about eight beers up and wondering how I'd get home. Somewhere in there I was closing the store. Somewhere in there was a linear narrative. I'm trying to write a short story about a television obsessed with an author who is obsessed with television. Because It has become a common thing, since the latter half of the last bit of the twentieth for people to be obsessed with television. WIth television reality and reality becoming tv. Etc. Etc. Tell me you get what I'm saying. I don't want to explain further, because I have to work soon and probably blow my nose. But every time you close your eyes:

Maybe I'll write a love letter to Comets on Fire. They're in australia though.

This entire entry could have been put to better uses.

The Meritocracy of drinking

2007-02-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

Well, the laptop has shit the bed, and the car is still in the shop, but otherwise things are going swimmingly. I'm at the rents for tonight (hence the blogging) but heading back up to the city tomorrow morning, for work until 5, and then a crazy evening that should shock and awe my existence to its very core.

Items:

Clap your hands say yeah's new disc sucks balls. Old album still rocks my socks off.
Comets on Fire. Best. Band. Ever. Don't complain, don't you fuckin complain to me!
I scare the rainbow/green party with my Comets on freakin fire, don't complain to me, Grace Ross
I saw Martin Amis. Again.
I bought a new guitar. For no discernable reason.
I vomited for twelve hours straight, then worked a full shift, then went to a bar.
Why did I ever like Indie rock girl anyway? This makes her seem, well, much better than she is.
Dude, Alexis and Shar invited alec and I to a party. Bad idea?
Do you know how freakin difficult it is to write a story narrated by a television set?
Comets on freakin fire.

Round the fuck up:

I need my car fixed and a new laptop. I also need a dozen more drinks and a girl to get sloppy all over me.

Damn.

[gluglguguguglglggugugglglgugugggllgugugg] [pop] Hi there[pop] [gluglgguguglglgugglguguggl]

That's apparently whats been going on.

So many years . . .

2007-01-26T00:04:00.000-08:00

Requiem
July 12 2003
go down to the sea
to celebrate your memory
to mourn an anniversary
write it here in this diary
feeling six years guilty
tears welling up taste salty
and memories haunt me
Heard you in a dream
could not see or flee
nothing is what it seemed
and all that I leaned on
fell apart gone, a neat charm
and easy down fall
a nihilistic call from summer to fall
and to spring, a diseased king
who for my love is begging
how much do you love me
how long till my eyes see
and why cant I plead
and bleed, supplicate
and make a bargain with fate
to escape destiny?
On Lies these dreams are fed,
the mistaken notion that you are not dead.
For all I said and didnt say
from september 28 till today
for all I read, for the life I lead
for all my living and my dead
I scream to the heavens
for unleavened bread
and rain to wipe away this stain
and ban, to hold his hand
on the windswept sand
but it aint gonna happen;
its sappin my strength
shortening the length
of my stamina and rage
till as I drain merlot
to increase my flow
I finish and then addendum
for this incomplete requiem
kyrie eleison
christe eleison
all I have
for my brother,
aaron

Cold/Hot: the Decline and Fall

2007-01-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

So I went to the boink Burlesque tonight. Managed digits without even fuckin tryin. What the fuck?

People think that we dont understand
What it takes to outta be a man

I've got work early tomorrow
gonna stay awake, drunk, try and write something, then hopefully meet up with Gina for a movie. But nothing really rides on these plans

Sure I need to work.

I don’t care much for that
I don’t know why

I'm working lotsa nights this week, but I made tuesday night at the hub, and I don't feel bad, not one bit. I made it to Deep Ellum, and man, that place is da'shit, but don't believe me, try for yourself.

When I was a kid I saw a light
Floating high above the trees one night

Laura has a new job, and I did my taxes, and I've been saving a message from scott from this morning to savor this evening. Maybe I'll listen to it now.
naw . . .

Thought ‘twas an alien
Turned out to be just god

I've got a riff going and it needs to continue in like fashion lest it be cut off.

Next wednesday, I'll meet Amis again. This time I know I'm a better writer. I can read him and know what he is doing and where he needs to go that he doesn't. When you reach the point that your idols become sketchbooks, you know your ego or your talent need to be controled. I'm hoping its the latter, and that this isn't just some unjustified posturing, some sound and fury, on my part.

f you’re not sure who not to believe
Who has better reasons to decieve

Then they’ll be glad’r
That's all they do

The twentieth century is a minefield. Everything that is worth fictionalizing has been made real. That is what the twentieth has been about. A war without conceivable reason? An extermination without reason? A camp system spread across a continent, all geared towards irreason? That is the twentieth century. Reason applied to irreason, to irrational fears and imbedded prejudice. The twentieth played out all the possibilities of a state gone insane. Gulag archipelago. Vichy.
Stalinism. Auschwitz. Nouns empowered by the state. verbs erased. The dictatorship of is. The rule of has been. processed, enumerated, put to use, eliminated. terminated. Gassed.

You wanna write fiction in the twentieth or thereafter?

Welcome to the realm of cliche and dare not, the realm of cliche and bad-taste. You just can't make this shit up.

Just a fight or just a waste of time
Hiding things that no one wants to find

You wanna write fiction, here in the twenty-first? queu up, pick a spot, grab a ticket. Line the fuck up. There's nothing to be written but what has already been enumerated in blood. From the length of your dick to the size of the galaxy, everything has been enumerated, numbered, devoured, decieved, processed, elimanated, gassed.

This was a much less sunshiney post than I intended.

Mark's going away party

2007-01-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

Oh dear god I hurt.

A flight of tequila shots will do that to you.

Closing last night was a party, both at the party and at the store, and now I'm gonna shower and eat a muffin.

I'm not this good . . . yet

2007-01-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

Last thing you want on a day off

2007-01-17T10:30:00.000-08:00

This made me think of scott.

I need to go off now and buy some gloves and then meet w/ josh.

God doesn't listen to the prayers of the earnest.

PS. Comment you bastards. Comment like banshees, like avenging angels with swords of fire and mouths bellowing rapture. Comment like a train running over a school bus in alabama, like a retard in a Joyce Carol Oates story rapes little girls, comment like a hitchhiker in a flannary O'connors world kills families, comment like the tumor-ridden genetic freaks of the future you are. No comment will be denied, no claim turned away, no ceaseless begging for cock left unanswered or unsated. HAH.

2007-01-16T01:58:00.000-08:00

Now we don't speak any english,
just american without tears.

Going to the pheebs cousins show at great scott, even though its so damn far away . . .

Tomorrow - Meet with Josh, tea tasting at central, beer tasting maybe at Field, then home again?

Thurs-Mon Closing at Inman, and you all should stop by and see me and show me some love.

The Bukowski girls feed me too much beer.

2007-01-16T00:45:00.000-08:00

You work a long week of closes, the final day feels like a revelation.

Like Marconi beach sunrises. Oh god I miss those days. And breakfast at the Post Office at P-town. Who's down?

Maybe I'm just tired, but I'm jubilant. I've been through some harsh shit in my time, and I'm not laboring under the illusion it gets better, but I've done some time, and all I have to say is, is this the worst it can get?

I'm writing again. I'm reading again. I've got notebooks and they're filling up. I'm out of the culdesac that has plagued me for two years, and I've escaped, like Steve McQueen on his fuckin bike, riding out of a POW camp across europe.

I've got a million ideas and they're all so fuckin vivid it makes my head hurt. If all it takes to make me this euphoric is to decide once and for all to cut out people who drain me, people who demand every fucking thought in my head and even then it's discarded as lame . . . well christ, get me some more dead weight to cut away, because after a long time of searching, I've found a drug whose high is worth the addiction.

since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair, well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain, and hate the idle pleasures of these days

The dudek recommended Kertesz' Liquidation and so far it is an expansive endeavor. Who can write fiction after an event that defines expansive imagination as darkly as the holocaust does? Kertesz can. I would argue that some others can, but only through cultural distance (Rushdie, and his own identification with Partition), or through humor (Roth and his obsession with the hang-ups of the academic american male), or simply through expansive historical flow-chartiness (Delillo, or Pynchon, who is the master of us all)

But only Kertesz can write about it without having been there. At least as far as I've read. Some people were there, and they have written memoirs that cut like cold steel and bring back blazing luminescence from places we dare not (Frankl, Wiesel) and others have attempted, without being there (Amis, Anne Frank rip-offs). But this is different. It is indirect but never avoidant, and that is what makes this book so intense.

God, I need like a dozen more drinks.

2007-01-09T17:08:00.000-08:00

By the way, if you think you don't need to read Pynchon's Against the Day, someone needs to give you a fuckin second smile and leave your body to marinate in the gutters of mass ave.

oh god

2007-01-09T16:52:00.000-08:00

Going hubpubbin tonight, tomorrow got a meeting with Josh, the next four days I close the store . . . I dunno, thats about all I got planned.

Yeah, I know I made a hash job of that, but my photoshop makes my laptop crash, and then when I start it back up, it hates me and acts all bitchy and burns the coffee and tells me to stop looking at so much porn.

last week was intense, and it wore me out, and I'm ready to have some beers and see people I've missed for quite some time. This fall was bizarre, and now that I'm back in the city on a less-than-transient basis, I'm discovering I had a life that I had missed all along, like that I had been another person for a few months.

God, I saw Barnicle the other night, and man, I can't help but miss drinking with that girl.

You know what I also miss?

Wild fuckin zero. That movie is inspiring.

Like watching Beethoven bend over some grossly painted hooker and play a symphony of pain with a paddock. Huh. There's a lot rattling around in my subconscious that gets outed here, and a hell of a lot that rattles around inside until it finds the level of ripeness fit to unleash havoc on my tongue and get me into trouble.

I'm home.
Scott should come home.
I need a fuckin drink.

well then

2007-01-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

Still battling that cold, though now it is in rout, and I'm watching the ford funeral while at home and still in my Pj's. Yesterday was rough, but I got through it, thanks to some herbal tea and multi-shots of espresso.

My new year's eve was eventful, to say the least. I got a last minute email from the Zambri girls that they'd be up from NY and at TT's for the Porsches event, and so I went along to that, taking breaks to hang with coffee people at the Middle East. I have to say, after years of attending the madin nye parties, it was nice to spend one out,given that the madin's party often leads me to racing glasses of champagne with Sean, and then puking a lot in the bathroom.

Saw the pheebs last week, went out to dinner and hung around watching 5th element, very nice.

Anyway, I'll be down at the parents for tonight and tomorrow, then going back up to Cambridge wed. night. Working thurs-sun.

My lungs are filled with phlegm, my heart with hope for a better 07 than 06.

Heh. Cough.

My name is huge.

the taj mahal of fake fifties diners.

2006-12-29T09:56:00.000-08:00

Christmas was lovely, except for the giant headcold, that I thought was strep, that is not strep because strep doesn't cause gluey grey mucus to fall out my nose at totally inappropriate times. This has made work more interesting.

If you're still reading, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Well, I gotta go run and check in on my car at the shop, and then head back up to the city.

I saw allan, sean, and scott the other night, a good time was had by all, though I was nearly too sick to do anything, and the next morning I felt like I was going to die.

God, I need to hang with Alethea soon.

2006-12-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

Shit. I think I might have strep. Merry christmas indeed.

Obligatory Xmas Post, bitter and hollow

2006-12-25T09:06:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

Now remember, today is not a day to indulge in those paganistic revels so celebrated by the Secular left. No, today is about Christ, who died on a cross for all of us, even the jews. So remember Jesus this afternoon, as you hang with your miserable, sinning families.

Meep, I wanna be elsewhere.

I need a drink

2006-12-22T10:53:00.000-08:00

cars in the shop, and I'm about ready to piss myself in fury. Driving the mom-mobile to work tonight.

someone give me a blowjob and a guinness.

2006-12-14T11:02:00.000-08:00

On Cnn, they're playing the same footage of Harry Reid getting out of an SUV and going in to visit Johnson in the hospital, over and over again. 4 times in the past five minutes by my count. It's weird, because it reminds me so much of that footage of Jack Abramoff going into the courthouse from a few months back. Democrats go to hospital, republithugs go to jail.

Tonight, Tonight, was a disaster.

2006-12-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

there's a shield around us
it's invisible & soundless
& we drink too much & fuck too soon
smoke cigarettes in rented rooms
we quit our jobs & shoot the moon
& cut our wrists & sleep til noon

1:30 in the afternoon, and I'm getting ready for work. Work 4-close at Central, and the open the Inman store the next morning. I feel tired. The Bukowskis drained me dry last night, and the ride home was just insufferable. Four days till my birthday and like the wrens song, bored rural lord at 24, yeah right, I'm the best 17-year old ever. Just waisting my time, burning my days with work and stressing out about the car and who I owe money and what, and who do I owe favors to this week, family or friends, and how did I end up with my entire life mortgaged to vapid daydreams and sneering generosities.

there's a shield around us
we are heady we are groundless
& we burn our friends & kill their names
build insecure & petty fames
& tattoo things that we believe
stars & skulls & hearts in half-sleeves

She let me borrow money for gas on my way back to Carver last night, said I shouldn't buy cigarettes with it but I did anyway and let the engine whine down through vapors. I'm being all melodramatic again but frankly I feel like shit so deal with it.

there's a shield around us
tell me how is it you've found us
cause we hide our tracks & watch the ground
our footfalls they don't make a sound
we've cursed the names of our hometowns
we're compassless & nowhere bound

I don't wanna work central tonight.

2006-12-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

Oh god, you know what made me think of b-grade japanese movies? Those damn Wii commercials. Someone needs to shoot those two creepy guys in their little car. Shoot them with a gun.

Whose up for some fermented malt beverages with a great deal of hoppy happiness?

Back from being slightly insane

2006-12-11T12:18:00.000-08:00

Wow. Going nuts every once in a while is spectacular. Granted, it makes me a douche, and I end up sleeping 14 hours straight, but you gotta do what you gotta do, especially when you're coming up on a birthday that stands without any accomplishments to speak for 24 years of effort. That was a horrifically convoluted sentence.

It's been an odd week. I worked at central, which is like Bizarro 1369. Slightly larger and everything slightly misplaced, uncanny and disturbing. And then the cultural rift between the two stores. At the booze cruise the Inman alcoholics stayed near the bar and gradually got comotose, while the central stoners blazed on the foredeck and talked about stars and other such bullshit. Inman=alcoholic, neurotic. Central=stoned, layed-back, slow. So it was a strange, discomfiting evening.

I missed last nights star wars party at my coworker Allison's place, but I miss pretty much everything these days, and there wasn't any guarentee of booze.

Besides which, we had turkey at home!

Anyway, looking at puppies.

and listening to music

Have you seen this?

It took Suzuki 30 years to make that. It's the sequel to this surreal noir classic

Neither make much sense, but they're pretty much the coolest two movies I've ever seen. I don't know what made me think of them.

I couldn't find a picture to post here.

Here's to the Shrill and the Weeping

2006-11-29T10:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the worst day in quite some time. Car problems, late to work, sick to my stomache, burning fluids spilled all over my hand, no money and no access to money, no cigs and no access to cigs.

At this point I'm glad yesterday is over, and I have some money, wheels, cigs, and even some optimism for the rest of the day.

It really started with the day before thanksgiving. Robert Pinsky came into the store, and me being the geek I am, I just had to tell someone. So I called Allan. Allan has been a friend since I was 15. I spent three nights a week at his house for most of high school, and when my dad had the stroke I was at his house. We drove 120 all the way to Plymouth, me smoking cigarretes like a fiend and him telling me it would be ok. Well, Allan went to Florida over the summer, to be near his girlfriend, who was down there for an internship. I call him on wednesday, and hes on a bus down to Falmouth, but promises to hang out later are made.

The day he flies out he sends me a text message saying sorry, and that he "aims to be a better friend." This shouldn't upset me as much as it does. Allan has been inconsiderate and incapable of making plans all his life, but still, I can't get over it. I've burned a lot of friends in the past 4 months, some totally deserving of it, others not. I've grown in my intolerance of feeling used, feeling just like a ride, for some people.

Anyway, I need to go shower and get ready for work, and think about my next move.

Oh, and Slither is an incredible movie. Truly brilliant!

2006-11-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

I'm getting out of these pjs and heading up to Boston to see the Jamie. That will keep me form dispair. YAY, Beer. Yay, movies. Yay Beer!

I want some damn pie.

Man

2006-11-24T08:32:00.000-08:00

I just feel really fuckin sad today...

Soundtrack of the Damned

2006-11-19T10:22:00.000-08:00

1. A selection of Beijing National Opera's Greatest Hits
2. Guitar Wolf
3. Japanese Children's music star Juri
4. Gilbert and Sullivans Pirates of Penzance
5. Deerhoof
6. Charlie Daniels Band

7. Play and watch 1369 empty out. Closing last night was freakin awful.

Saturday Morning

2006-11-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

I'm bored, and am going to work in like ten minutes. Give me some money or beer.

God I fucking hate hippies.

Waaaaaaah

2006-11-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

I need to move back to the city. I am so bored here. And so lazy, though I did clean my car today. Plus I miss everyone up there. I miss Cara and Dalia, and chattin with them at the Shithole (it got egged on haloween, way to go Brighton Ruffians!) and all my tuesday night peeps, esp. John. Man, that guy pukes like a viking. And Jess B. I pine for her sweet sweet abuse. The bruises from last time seeing her have totally faded away, gotta see if I can make it tonight. I miss the Pheebs, and I know I totally promised to show at her haloween dig but its just so hard to move when you're this far away . . .

Man, whatever happened to Naho? Did she die or something? Or is it me who died? If so, I think Sartre had it almost right. Hell is other people, who happen to share a good deal of genetic material with you. My great uncle thinks that Patrick, as govenor, will encourage young black people to shoot eachother more in Boston. I went to see him on Veterens day because he was in France in 44, and because hes a pretty kick-ass guy all around. Payed for Falmouth Academy, and what not. Still, only slightly rascist.

EH, running away now.

I need a life!

2006-11-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

2006-11-03T17:29:00.000-08:00

Oh, and before I go, I just have a few things to say:

James Woods has no eyebrows. Weird.

The New Doctor Who: kinda awesome.

My dad's commentary during tv shows: really lame.

My dad during Grey's Anatomy: "They're interns. They're learning how to do surgery. That one likes the guy with the homo-haircut."

during Dr. Who: "This program has been going so long, they've twenty something actors who've played the Doctor."

during Battlestar Galactica: "Those robots can look like humans. They destroyed the human race."

during Law and Order:SVU: "They investigate sex crimes"

I love my dad, but he has a habit of pontificating on the obvious.

Gah

2006-11-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

Partying in Brighton? Probably the worst idea I've ever had. Still, here I go.

Tomorrow night: Decemberists.

Next Week: Promotion at work

Next Month: turn 24, still nothing to show for it.

Next year: God only knows what, but it'll probably be boring and end up all for the worst.

Dirth of intelligible news

2006-10-26T20:29:00.000-07:00

For the second day in a row, I've been basically abandoned on the floor at work. Which is fine really. Really, no I'm ok with it. I'm a little peeved.

I'm a total geek. I read Asimov's Foundation the other day, and it pissed me off. I think it gave me a headache. Asimov is incredibly smart. Read his glosses of Shakespeare if you have any doubt. But as a writer, he is nothing but artifice and empty suits, plot turns laid out like midwestern roads, all right angles at even intervals.

He parades characters and conflicts onto the stage, tidily wipes up t he action with a clever little pirouet, and moves on down the line. For someone who could recognize the brilliance of Fallstaff, Asimov has trouble writing characters with the depth of saturday morning cartoons.

Honestly. K. Dick kicks Asimov.

Lazy days

2006-10-18T21:53:00.000-07:00

Today I finished two books! Otherwise, I accomplished very little. I never left my pajamas or the house, except to take the dog for a walk, and I managed to write a lot, none of it very good. I also saw Olbermann, and tonight he was fucking righteous. My favorite current tv news man earns his place in my heart once again. Wolf, you can take your oddly appropriate facial hair and shove it.

The world is falling apart, but I've got ice cream, cigarettes, and a hottie filling up my cells inbox with text messages, and so I'm , , , content.

Now if only I can find an amount of money that will allow me to get suitably irresponsably drunk . . .

2006-10-17T17:57:00.000-07:00

Honestly, if you feel like blogging is the best way to call someone a crazy cunt, you need to take your cock out of your mouth and look at yourself.

For my part, I choose her. She has been consistently generous with me, and while I do not depend on her, I know that I could, if I had to. I can't even trust you with a hit of e, now can I? Can I, Scott?

Grrr. Work.

2006-10-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and wanted to shoot someone in the face. Any volunteers?

This Was Uncalled For

2006-10-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

So I am moving out of the apartment. I haven't slept there so far this week, due to some drama, and I've been crashing elsewhere.

In other news, I'm totally broke.

Surprisingly enough, I'm not angry, or sad, or really anything other than grateful. Grateful for the generosity of my friends, the understanding and help of my family. I make only a third or a fourth of what I was making at Athan's, and this is hurting seriously, but I am so much happier at 1369. I'll figure out a way to get through this, and get stable once more, and hopefully to once again thrive, either in this city or another.

Jamie has been awesome through all of this, listening to me bitch and moan and putting me up at hers. I'm particularily grateful that I met her when I did, she's an utterly fantastic person.

I'm tired and at my parents house. And I'm watching battlestar galactica. Heh.

Things that make no sense

2006-09-21T19:54:00.000-07:00

I am rambly tonight.

My internet has been shut off. This is because my roommate hasn't paid me in 8 months. SO now I am updating from a coffee shop in Allston.

I'm sorry I haven't been in touch, huppub folks. Two weeks in a row now I've been remiss, and I plan on seeing you all very soon.

I could bore you with details from the clusterfuck that is my life, suffice to say, I don't really feel like talking to anyone right now. Scott, I keep picking up my phone to call you, but I am a freekin pussy. I dunno. Phobias of talking to people overwhelming.

Except for Ny, this week has pretty much sucked.

Ny was pretty fun though.

I'm gonna go home and listen to some sad songs.

Hi there

2006-09-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty angry. About a lot of stuff. Thought you all should know. Not that I can do anything about it.

I'm going to see the motherfucking wrens tonight. So honestly I could give a shit how I feel.

This week was

2006-09-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

horrific. My car got towed, and then the shit really hit the fan. I was thinking, originally, about 100$ to get it out. And I payed that. But no, my insurance had lapsed, and so it ended up costing about 400$, but for a while, I was thinking maybe more like 800$, which would have meant me having to leave the city, or ignoring the fact that I pay rent. Or both.

But it all got sorted out on tuesday. I got all my shit together, got the car reinsured, reregistered, payed the storage, and got it out on the streets with enough time to visit Jamie at the 'bucks and get down to Cambridgeside to meet the staff for our summer party. It was a cruise in Boston harbor, with a cashbar and catered. My coworker Jackie (who is incredible) was buying drinks faster than I could suck them down, and I was going full tilt like the charming asshole I am. All in all, an incredible evening, and the city looked just gorgeous, almost as gorgeous as whatshername 1, or whatshername 2.

Then went to work at 7 am the next morning, and man, was that some nostalgia. Haven't pulled the totally hungover asscrack of dawn shift since my best days at Athan's, but I got through it with alacrity and aplomb, as is my want.

I am going to NYC on sunday with Jamie, and am looking forward to it more than anything. I have a bad history with trips to NYC, starting all the way back in the days of Sean and Viv and allan and 'tien, and the ride to Phili that took 12 freakin hours.

There is a lot of strife going on, and I am presently in the center of it, though the cause of none of it. I have a lot to say on the matter, but because all the people involved are my friends, and I am a polite individual, I will reserve my words for in person meetings and whispered telephone conversations in the dark of night, as is my want.

I have a lot on my plate right now, and I am slowly beginning to realize that this summer has changed a lot of things for me, has changed a lot about me. BEing fired from Athan's was good for me, in a lot of ways. It ended the monastacism of long hours, long weeks, and drinking alone at Porter Belly's or the Middle East. But it also ended my being financially comfortable, and now I am frantically searching for supplements to my income. I feel like a lot of my life was just lost in that job, and I'm only now rediscovering it. If it takes being broke to be this happy, then I'll switch beers for martinis and burn dollars in the furnace. Just don't let me get so far gone as to have to move home. I can't do that. Not just on a moving back in with parents sucks thing, but physically, I cannot move back in there. There isn't room and I'd be driven mad within a week.

I'm a bit rambly, I know that.

Indulge me at your peril.

Nothing but contempt for the living

2006-09-09T16:49:00.000-07:00

If this means I have to leave the city for good, well then, brother I am pissed.

Waiting

2006-09-02T16:37:00.000-07:00

for my roommate to get out of the bathroom so I can wash the coffee stink off me before heading over to Jamie's tonight. Last night I had a personality crash, with all my little stressors compiling into one big fuck up that I convinced myself could just be sorted out by trying to make sense of one eensy-weensy bit, which is not only a bad idea in and of itself, but lead me to being a douche, to quite a few people and one in particular. For all of last nights douchebaggery, I'm really quite sorry.

Work today was alright. Mostly too damn busy for me to spend much time complaining, and between that and the hangover, things went considerably smoother than expected. I've got to get a lot of things under control before we get too far into fall, and I have none of them.

I want a pony. A damn big pony. And a cookie. And to actually finish something I start. And a clean room (HAH) and way to pay for going to Hawaii for my friends wedding this spring. But mostly I want food. and to shower. and watch bad tv.

I'm hungover.

2006-09-02T06:19:00.000-07:00

Hi. Sorry. This is going to take a while to be sorted out.

You just gotta get used to the fact that I like to ruin my life.

This is almost like blogging, without any of the work.

2006-08-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

I dare any of you motherfuckers to find a more inspiring puppet video.

there is no bad mood that can't be solved with puppets.

2006-08-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

oh, and I'm going to see the Wrens in two freakin weeks. I shit my pants in glee. Alright. Food. Now.

I'm learning

2006-08-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

I woke up from my post work nap with dreams of iced drinks still in my head. So I rattled them loose and now am updating before I go in search of food. Huh. Monday night. I am on a not drinking kick for a little bit, a detox, which not only a) will save me money, but b) will make me stop waking up feeling like shit and wanting to kill everything and everyone. Laundry needs to be done, and I still have this pile of shit that I need to find a home for cluttering up my room. Honestly, this got out of hand months ago, and at this point I'm considering just pouring gasoline on the whole freakin thing and walking out, tossing my lit cigarette into the fumes as I turn away.

I had about eight plans die in midbirth last night, mostly due to the weather, but the improvised, last minute one stuck, and so I went over to Jamie's and watched tv with her, while we debated the pros and cons of actually eating food. This was infinitely better than going to a party where I knew no one and inevitably would have ended up alienating everyone there once the eighth or ninth bourbon glided down my gullet.

The laundry is in the machine. My shoes are on. I am going out to grab some food, and then I'll come home and put the laundry in the dryer, after which I'll lock myself in the room in order to actually try and finish some of these stories who have been lying around for weeks, sometimes months. I will not, as is my habit, crack a beer before starting. I will not, as is my habit, distract myself, or distract you, for that matter, because I have been doing far too much of that and you need to do things to, though it pains me to admit this, things more important than hanging out with me.

So anyway, off to find food for me. Wheres my playstation?

I'm Sorry for the Silence

2006-08-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me why or how or what's happening. I don't know and I don't care. Just bring more drinks in the mean time and I can try and be impressive, at any rate. I'm tired, I'm running on empty, I'm running to the hospital. So long as by hospital you mean bar.

In a single night I have been described as scholar, gentleman, scoundrel, cad, card, flirt, fanatic, prick, asshole, sweetheart, the dictator of drunk, autocrat of alcohol, archbishop of booze. I am vast, I contain multitudes. This is all very well but its getting late and I'm getting tired and things (if you haven't noticed) are wildly beyond my control. I am pretentious, I am full of myself, I am reasonably assured of my own brilliance, I am quaking with self doubt. I am using alliteration and parallel structure. I am chopping my sentences and clauses up quick, so the whole affect should remind one of a beating drum, a heartbeat, a march. I'm marching to the close now and so I will let loose these rhetorical flourishes to let play the phrases so it all rushes together and what once was steady and rythmic becomes hurried, frenetic, the lines will blur together and the sentiments will whip and tear apart at the seams. I am losing meaning like it were water through a sieve, I am throwing in plenty of literary references; there's shakespeare here and some whitman and most assuredly, though it is well hid, there is some Thomas Wolfe, for those with the eyes for it. For the rest of you, you should have given up ages ago, this is nothing but masturbation without the release, it is material manipulation, these words nothing but signifiers without signified, misplaced signposts directing you nowhere but the house of Asterion, where every room looks alike and there is no ball of thread for you nor have you a bronze sword so surely you are one of the nine, but not the one. How's that for pretentious? How's that for overwhelming you with misdirection.

"I thought this was going to be one of those fun, but ultimately repetitive 'Zach drinks too much' posts," you object. If you've gotten this far, there is nothing left but to close and close well, but I can't close, and though coffee is for closers, on this, the morning after in a string of hungover morning afters, I'm breaking the rules, I'm gonna sip my coffee and be done.

I'm putting my sleepy shoulder to the wheel.