Drop me a line if you want the URL of my current all-too-public spasms of extreme narcissism.

Peace and love -

r.

don’t use this word. [Update:  Link scrubbed.  The word in question appeared in a headline referring to an "Insane killer".]  just resist the fucking temptation. and don’t screech about us using it amongst ourselves, like white people whining about the “right” to use the N word.

for the survival of this blog.  i’m well aware these things come and go.  on and off and in different formats and under various names, this blog has existed since about a couple weeks before 9/11.  a lot has happened since then, and an awful lot has happened since i stopped blogging several times a day almost every day, down to a few times a week, then a few times a month, then basically never.

part of what happened, i think, is that this blog stopped being my one and only form of self-medication.  being basically trapped in a life-long downward spiral of mental illness, hitting a sort of 2nd circle of hell bottom, then going on the crazy pills in 2006, i hit a true watershed in my life, the main affects of which is still being felt and processed now, almost 3 years later.  i think my blogging really peaked about then and started to decline once i actually started getting some treatment and trying to take responsibility for my life and how it was.

which is not, of course, to say that this blog was merely the rantings of a mentally ill person and that the wonderful largess of the good and noble pharmaceutical corporations did finally cure me from my discontent.  far be it from me to ever stop being discontented with what is essentially a very late stage capitalist-consumerist culture, strangling itself in the throes of its own failed adventurism.  and far be it from me to stop raging against the dying of democracy, or the fake holoprojection of democracy or whatever.

but in taking care of myself for a change, getting out of bed, taking a shower, putting on clean clothes, doing the dishes etc., trying to be a husband again, trying to be a father, i realized that i had to redirect my energies.  over a 43 year span one’s energies get redirected quite a bit.  at one point, play seems important, then school, then work, then redefining those things.  i would not say that i have matured any measurable amount, much less mellowed; just that the circle keeps going ’round, and ’round about now the place i am at is trying to really experience what it means to actually function in a social sense.

unbelievably i have a meeting with a CLIENT who is consulting with me on web marketing issues.  of course it’s a pro bono case, but there you go.  someone actually wants my sort-of-expertise on something.  (there i go qualifying it again.)  the idea being that if they are satisfied with the assistance i give them, perhaps they will spread the word of mouth into the community.  perhaps.

which is also not to say that my daily existence is not still fraught with various outrages, spasms, interesting thoughts, regurgitated trivia, movie reviews, recipes etc.  i have everything needed floating around inside my head to sustain a good and healthy amount of blogging.

the only thing is, my inspiration has moved on to other things.  i have outlets in the non-anonymous, real-name sector of the internet now – no longer am i a voice crying out in the wilderness, i actually am a person standing under the light saying my name and telling stories from my perspective to an audience of people who are more or less doing the same thing.

i could not have arrived at this place without you.  and i am forever in your debt to a degree that can never be repaid, much less thanked for enough.

some of you have found me on the other side, where names are named, and i am also very grateful for that.  i hope that i don’t disappoint you too much and that i mailed you whatever CDs and whatnot i promised to mail you.  i have a tendency to fuck that shit up a lot, and sometimes need a few gentle reminders.

the rest of you, who prefer to keep your internet life and real life separate, but who might be interested in silently lurking in the places where i am writing now, leave me a message – i’ll send you directions for where to find me.

come down to the ol’ family fourth a joo-lie pickanick, and hear my mom (that’s my mom – the mom that played piano in sunday school) singing old wobbly songs…..i mean i know my dad’s side of the family are all pinkos, but i thought mom was a more recent convert…..i guess there’s more than one reason she hooked up with dad.

and then (and here’s where the title come in) i discover that my favorite uncle and aunt, who i’ve talked not much to in the past 9 years even though we only live 2 hours away – are Kossacks!

small fucking world i guess, and perfectly fucking wonderful to be sure, to paraphrase R. Crumb.

the mainstream news media, the blogosphere, and all your friends on facebook have one thing to talk about over the past couple of days, it seems: the passing of the King of Pop. by contrast, while the usual suspects in the news services continually spouted out the same regurgitated over-careful reports [except for this one, which was pretty shockingly informative], i would guess a much smaller fraction of your friends on facebook mentioned a brutal massacre of unarmed, peaceful demonstrators by the iranian theocracy’s home-grown Sturmabteilung.  i can’t tell you what the blogosphere had to say about the massacre, because quite frankly – i don’t care.

the cloud of unknowing that truncates the perceptions of most americans can not be more blatantly exposed.  remember when there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of nearly every city in america protesting bush’s planned invasion of iraq?  oh sorry – according to the tv news, it was tens of thousands, or even just thousands.  or if it was fox, hundreds.

and then most of us quit after one demonstration.  not all of us, but most of us.

this isn’t entirely our fault – it’s human nature.  as a mass entity the american bourgeoisie is terminally resistant to any kind of radical change because every atrocity that happens here happens in slow motion, while we are misted down with the liquid narcotic known as “the real housewives of new jersey”.  real health care reform legislation is being gutted before our very eyes by the real rulers of this country, our overlords of the medical-industrial complex [the ones who manufacture and sell me the drugs that keep me functional, for example, at a rate that prevents me from saving any money; i can't rail against my insurance company any more because i've joined the ranks of millions who don't have one.]  look!  over there!  paris hilton and perez hilton are giving birth to a baby and naming it PEZ (in all caps!!!1)

what will it take to make the sleeping giant awaken and start a pot of coffee going and take a shower and put some pants on?  any iranian on the street will tell you the answer: sometimes the only thing that awakens you is blood.  and you’d better pray it’s not yours.

we rolled over and went “huh? uhh – what??  huhhh….” the last time we got hit.  then we grunted, rolled over again, and went back to sleep.

[pardon my cynicism - i haven't started a pot of coffee yet.]

i’d like to see the department of homeland security get involved in this, and similar cases, because in my book it meets absolutely every definitional requirement to be categorized as T-E-R-R-O-R-I-S-M.  and anyone you read today saying “well it’s a terrible shame, but…” is soft on terrorism.

getting a lot of network lag on my DB calls to you – maybe you need to debug the app

some days it’s just hard to do anything.  surprisingly enough it’s unstructured time that hits me the hardest.  if i have an alarm clock getting me out of bed at 5:00 a.m. every morning to trudge off to a shitty job that feels like someone’s hand holding my head underwater until i drown – that’s easy.  supposing i have an unplanned day off due to, i don’t know, let’s say for instance a holiday i forgot [that's another thing we do - forget holidays].  first, there’s nothing and no one telling you to get up.  you just have to get up.  eventually what gets you up is restlessness.

it doesn’t matter how hungry you are – you stare at the contents of the cupboard and the refrigerator, trying somehow to will edible food into existence.  you remember vaguely that last night you’d actually eaten soup straight out of the can, unheated.  somehow that just doesn’t work for breakfast.  it would be great if you had some breakfast cereal, but you forgot to buy some the last time you went to the store, which was – what?  two weeks ago?  you don’t have any bread to make toast with.  eggs, you’ve got some eggs, you could make some eggs.  you might even stare at the eggs for a while, sitting so comfortable and safe in their little compartments.  then you walk out of the kitchen, still hungry.

most of us have problems with our plumbing, either due to the sickness, the meds, or both.  you find yourself completely at the mercy of whatever is, or isn’t happening, in that department.  you might have severe constipation, you might have diarrhea, you might just have to keep going to the bathroom over and over again.  you feel a little bit sick just being in a physical body.  it’s about ten o’clock – how did it get to be ten already? – and you’re still in your underwear.  you finally manage to make some tea – coffee’s too hard – and you tell yourself you’re going to sit and watch some tv and relax [funny how what you think you need to do right now is relax] until you finish your tea, and then you’re really going to get off your ass.

everything on tv is, of course, stupid.  each succeeding choice seems dumber and dumber, until you wonder who these people who watch these shows are, and how they could be such idiots to provide ratings for such trash.  it actually gets to a point where the commercials are preferable to the shows.  they’re short, and their narrative is accessible.  you might even find yourself surfing the channels trying to find better commercials.  then you give up and turn off the tv.  you get up and walk away and try to fold some of the clean but unfolded laundry lying in heaps about the living room – you had congratulated yourself on doing some laundry several days ago, but after you’d managed to dry it and then haul it upstairs, the living room couches and floor is where it’s stayed.  the dog’s been sleeping on some of it.  you look at your dog and he looks back at you, with a “what the hell are YOU looking at?” expression on his face.  “you’re the one who’s supposed to be in charge here, not me!”

it’s about noon, and out of exasperation you manage to drag yourself into the shower.  it almost borders on a pleasurable experience, getting clean for the first time in several days, except it’s so goddamned overwhelming you can hardly stand it – just the sensations, the smells, the sounds.  when you get out you’re shaking as if you’re ninety years old.  you towel off, wrap the towel around you, and then spend about an hour wandering around the house trying to find your lucky shirt.  you finally find it at the bottom of the pile of dirty laundry that’s been in the basement for about a week.  you decide you’ll just dig an outfit out of the clothes lying around the living room.  you look at yourself in the mirror.  you look exactly like what you are – a crazy person.  then, you spend about a half hour trying to figure out which pair of half-ruined and uncomfortable shoes from your collection you’ll wear today.  you pick the same pair you always wear – the ones that hurt the least – and then spend about a half hour trying to find a matching pair of socks.  you have about twenty socks that came from one of those bargain packages of socks from the supermarket, but even though most people would find them indistinguishable, you spend what seems a lifetime trying to find two that are likely to have been an original pair.

eventually you settle on the closest match you can find, put on your shoes, and start looking for your pocket stuff – wallet, keys, change for the bus, etc.  you know you left your keys on the kitchen counter – you KNOW you did, you remember doing it, even thinking to yourself  “i will remember putting these here”.  eventually you find them underneath a pile of unmatched socks in the bathroom.  you go through the same madness looking for your sunglasses.  the idea of going outside without your sunglasses is frightening.  the same goes for your personal stereo device [iPod, Zune or whatever].  by the time you make it out the front door it’s 2:30.

then about ten blocks from your house you realize you forgot to take your pills.  you race back, gulp them down with some warm orange juice that’s been sitting on the counter for three days, put your afternoon dose in a sandwich baggie and stuff them in your pocket, and race back out.

it’s 3:00 and you’re finally at the shopping center that has the copy place, the post office, the starbucks, etc.  walking around with your sunglasses is cool and fun – it makes you feel like a spy or The Terminator or Neo from “The Matrix”.  you imagine soundtrack music playing [actually, you DO have soundtrack music playing on your headphones].  the walk was good for you, even though you’ve got a really messed up knee you just sort of woke up with one morning.  you think it’s because your job has you sitting around in front of a computer all day, that it’s done something to your whole musculoskeletal system.  you hope walking around will shake it out a little.  you can’t go to a doctor or a chiropractor because you got fired from the job that gave you health insurance.

you go into the copy store and spend about two hours assembling a couple dozen chapbooks, laboring over a task the simplest office administrator would find elementary but to you is like climbing everest or building an atomic bomb out of toothpicks.  you get nervous around the staff at the copy store.  they remind you of yourself, and to a man they look like ticking postal clerks waiting to explode.  you make as little eye contact as possible and leave with your precious cargo.

you go to the post office with your pre-addressed mailers – this is where you can be organized, with a project that you can get obsessed with at 2 or 3 a.m. – and send off all of the chapbooks that you had promised.  of the 24 chapbooks that required more psychic effort to create than most people produce in a lifetime, maybe two or three are going to paying customers.  the rest are to friends, relatives, fellow poets, a couple of small presses that you hope will actually read them.  as you watch the envelopes going into the drawer one by one, you think of how parents must feel sending their kids to school for the first time, or how the galapagos turtle feels watching her newly hatched young crawl into the sea.  from the 24 chapbooks you will receive two replies – one a generic unsigned rejection letter from a small press, the other one a returned mailer marked “not at this address”.  you will not attempt this again for two years.

having gotten over this particular hurdle, you treat yourself to an expensive coffee drink you could have done a better job of making for yourself at home, to have the excuse to sit in your sunglasses looking cool and untouchable and above it all and watch all the fucking losers go by.  surprisingly, some of the people going by actually don’t seem like losers, just regular people.  then you see a pretty girl, and your heart goes into the toilet.  you think, no one would ever want me, and you stare into your expensive yet mediocre coffee drink.  when you look up she is gone.  you imagine becoming soul mates with her, somehow having the money to buy her a huge glittering brand new diamond ring unlike the cheap used ring you bought your wife.

in order to stay out of trouble, you decide to pick up some groceries.  you stare at the breakfast cereal shelf for a long, long time.  finally, out of desperation, you grab the kind you know your partner likes.  you tell yourself you’re just going to get a few things. the next thing you know you have three bags of groceries you couldn’t afford.  carrying them up the hill back to your street.  nothing makes you feel older than staggering along with bags of groceries, having to stop and rest every half block.

you get home, put the groceries on the kitchen floor, and sit down in a chair.  you fall asleep in the chair and when you wake up it’s to the sound of keys in the door.  for a moment – a moment that makes you nauseated with guilt – you are afraid, and wish you had time to hide.

what if i actually manage to overcome the self-constructed hurdles resulting from my illness, as well as the bureaucratic hurdles that someone with illness like mine can hardly cope with, and good golly mcjesus christmas christ on a cracker, i got my Associate’s? an actual degree. a sheepskin.

to have finished something.

to have finished.

something.

when i try to click on a data point on my stats graph, the stats window loads with…..my wordpress login page. ?????

looks like somebody’s code got a little fried……..

guess i’ll just wait for somebody to fix it.