I am not a fan of Christmas and this fact seems to bug people to no end. I'm not entirely sure why that is as my dislike of Christmas has no bearing on anyone else's experience of the holiday. I generally keep my disdain to myself and happily help out with the tree and the lights and the rest of the attendant holiday bullshit. On the rare occasions that I explain my "meh" for all things Christmas I'm inevitably told that I have no joy in my life or that I should just enjoy the food/gatherings/gifts or that it's ok to just celebrate the Winter Solstice. All of these seems to me to be so beside the point that I often find myself depressed at the impossibility of escaping the gravitational pull of Christmas. Why is it so important for some people that there be this absurd consensus on Christmas? Who the fuck really cares about any of this to the point that they need to seek converts for the cause?
I think the whole thing is bullshit and an environmental and mental health disaster. Fuck it. Next year I'm going to Thailand and eating like a champ while lounging on a beach.
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Friday, November 24, 2017
In the end, we all die. Unless you change.
Four months since I almost died for nothing and I haven’t had a drink. Things are exactly where they need to be at this point.
It kind of came as a shock to me when my life flashed before my eyes and all I could muster was a weak, “No.” A plaintive and pointless cry into the abyss followed by lights out and pain of various and sundry types. I saw my son playing baseball but he was an adult. I saw my daughter crying but couldn’t tell how old she was. I saw my wife smoking a cigarette and laughing. I was dead, of course, and sorely saddend by that fact as I was causing pain and missing so much life.
It’s four months later and I meditate, work, skate, and try to be present for those around me. It’s not easy as I feel myself changing while several around me seem dead set on staying the same. I have no control over any of it but that is o-fucking-k and simply the way of the world.
I heard Bill wither’s “Lovely Day” while skating and dedicated it to my skateboard, one of the few constants in my life. Make of that what you will.
It kind of came as a shock to me when my life flashed before my eyes and all I could muster was a weak, “No.” A plaintive and pointless cry into the abyss followed by lights out and pain of various and sundry types. I saw my son playing baseball but he was an adult. I saw my daughter crying but couldn’t tell how old she was. I saw my wife smoking a cigarette and laughing. I was dead, of course, and sorely saddend by that fact as I was causing pain and missing so much life.
It’s four months later and I meditate, work, skate, and try to be present for those around me. It’s not easy as I feel myself changing while several around me seem dead set on staying the same. I have no control over any of it but that is o-fucking-k and simply the way of the world.
I heard Bill wither’s “Lovely Day” while skating and dedicated it to my skateboard, one of the few constants in my life. Make of that what you will.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
When Griff and I were little, we went to school in the same sea. And the master was an old turtle; we used to call him "tortoise."
I often look at the turtle and realize that he and the dog are remnants of my past life and I love them so much more for that fact. Of all the things in life that are ephemeral they have, despite themselves and their biology, remained constants for me. I've often been told to ditch them both but that will never happen. I will, one day, bury them both (perhaps they'll witness my burial and curse my name) and sing drunken songs of their glory and worth. I hope on that day I will finally become a man.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Aww, lookie here. Looks like somebody threw away a perfectly good white boy!
I have not published in several years. I have been busy with The Fam.
I am moved to publish because tonight I very much wanted to beat a cracker to death. That's not at all a nice thing to think or say or write but it is the truth.
In my defense, a number of crackers have been asking for it of late. Loudly. Incessantly. In typical cracker fashion they've acted like they haven't earned a beating, what with their White Privilege/Tears/Fragility/Entitlement they should just keep on keeping on.
But they're wrong.
Case in point: While having a drink with my friend we were treated to a voluble and spirited cracker discussion of Mr. Kapernick and his (awesome) protest. One cracker decided to go on a monologue about cornbread and how he "sho 'nuff luuuvs cornbread," while the others did there best impersonations of some race-based memory of Amos 'n Andy.
You see where this is going, right?
I held my tongue. I drank my beer. My friend and I began talking about our deep and sudden desire to be somewhere else. I wanted to say something but what was the use? If you can't silently protest and you can't protest on the street and you can't be the President and say that *maybe* there's a problem... If POTUS isn't supposed to talk about race relations because it makes crackers feel icky then what can you do?
I'm depressed. I'm a POC and I've had enough.
There's no good way to wrap this up. Black Lives Matter.
Peace out, bitches!
I am moved to publish because tonight I very much wanted to beat a cracker to death. That's not at all a nice thing to think or say or write but it is the truth.
In my defense, a number of crackers have been asking for it of late. Loudly. Incessantly. In typical cracker fashion they've acted like they haven't earned a beating, what with their White Privilege/Tears/Fragility/Entitlement they should just keep on keeping on.
But they're wrong.
Case in point: While having a drink with my friend we were treated to a voluble and spirited cracker discussion of Mr. Kapernick and his (awesome) protest. One cracker decided to go on a monologue about cornbread and how he "sho 'nuff luuuvs cornbread," while the others did there best impersonations of some race-based memory of Amos 'n Andy.
You see where this is going, right?
I held my tongue. I drank my beer. My friend and I began talking about our deep and sudden desire to be somewhere else. I wanted to say something but what was the use? If you can't silently protest and you can't protest on the street and you can't be the President and say that *maybe* there's a problem... If POTUS isn't supposed to talk about race relations because it makes crackers feel icky then what can you do?
I'm depressed. I'm a POC and I've had enough.
There's no good way to wrap this up. Black Lives Matter.
Peace out, bitches!
Saturday, July 13, 2013
I mean, I've seen men stabbed, didn't mean shit to me. I've seen guns, guns too, they don't mean shit. But that's when you gotta watch yourself.
I received a backhanded compliment at work this week,went to two funerals, and came home to find that the prick who murdered a black teenager was acquitted. You will, of course, forgive me when I say I've fucking had enough.
What's that quote? "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Not particularly profound but popped into my head when my boss told me, "You're too good a focus puller for me to let you operate," which in English means I'm not getting promoted because I might take his job. One day. Or not. Either way I'm apparently not making any more money anytime soon with this guy. It's a good way to finish a job. I get to work with him again in a week. Not as the operator, of course, since I'm so good translating what he wants into actual action from the crew. It happens. You get good, you get pigeonholed, you say fuck you and burn the place down, dynamite the bridge, and move on to the next gig.
People die. People die every day, every minute, every second. Someone, some where died while I was typing this and while you were reading this. It just happens. It's the inevitable result of being born. If you're really lucky you live a long healthy life of relative happiness and success and you don't bury your children or your grandchildren. That was the first funeral and it was sad and beautiful and felt like the right conclusion to an awesome story, you know the kind that when it ends you feel full and content and sigh to yourself, "Well, of course it ended like that."
When you're not lucky and Life decides to kick your ass you die well before your time and your kids and their kids have to bury you and it's a damn miserable business. It's the kind of thing that makes you believe quite resolutely that every religious person you've ever met is a lying asshole and that if Gawd exists you'd like to kick it in the balls. That was the second funeral. There was crying, there was gnashing of teeth, there was wailing to the heavens and there was, of course, the funny little man in the white smock talking out of his ass about someone he barely knew. At least there were some good memories shared at the reception of a truly wonderful person who I was lucky to know.
Just to cement the whole suckage of it all Florida reassured white America that black lives are worthless. Progress is un-American, dontchaknow?
Fuck Florida.
Fuck a judicial system so blinded to its own prejudices and assumptions about class and race that out of six jurors and four alternates not one person was black. It's fucking ridiculous and it happens all the time and all of the centuries old assumptions about black cocks and sexual desires and the fecundity of black women and the inability of any black person to do anything positive are constantly at work against black defendants. Chips stacked and waiting against. Always.
I'm sick of this shit. I'm sick of chickenshit fucks running around with guns looking for people to push around. I'm sick of white people insisting that we live in a post-racial society while they simultaneously gush about dumb shit like gangster rap and say, "YOLO!" I'm sick of chronic underfunding of schools in economically depressed areas while the police department gets to arm itself to the teeth with weapons better suited for combat than "Protecting and Serving." I'm sick of it all.
Peace out, bitches!
What's that quote? "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Not particularly profound but popped into my head when my boss told me, "You're too good a focus puller for me to let you operate," which in English means I'm not getting promoted because I might take his job. One day. Or not. Either way I'm apparently not making any more money anytime soon with this guy. It's a good way to finish a job. I get to work with him again in a week. Not as the operator, of course, since I'm so good translating what he wants into actual action from the crew. It happens. You get good, you get pigeonholed, you say fuck you and burn the place down, dynamite the bridge, and move on to the next gig.
People die. People die every day, every minute, every second. Someone, some where died while I was typing this and while you were reading this. It just happens. It's the inevitable result of being born. If you're really lucky you live a long healthy life of relative happiness and success and you don't bury your children or your grandchildren. That was the first funeral and it was sad and beautiful and felt like the right conclusion to an awesome story, you know the kind that when it ends you feel full and content and sigh to yourself, "Well, of course it ended like that."
When you're not lucky and Life decides to kick your ass you die well before your time and your kids and their kids have to bury you and it's a damn miserable business. It's the kind of thing that makes you believe quite resolutely that every religious person you've ever met is a lying asshole and that if Gawd exists you'd like to kick it in the balls. That was the second funeral. There was crying, there was gnashing of teeth, there was wailing to the heavens and there was, of course, the funny little man in the white smock talking out of his ass about someone he barely knew. At least there were some good memories shared at the reception of a truly wonderful person who I was lucky to know.
Just to cement the whole suckage of it all Florida reassured white America that black lives are worthless. Progress is un-American, dontchaknow?
Fuck Florida.
Fuck a judicial system so blinded to its own prejudices and assumptions about class and race that out of six jurors and four alternates not one person was black. It's fucking ridiculous and it happens all the time and all of the centuries old assumptions about black cocks and sexual desires and the fecundity of black women and the inability of any black person to do anything positive are constantly at work against black defendants. Chips stacked and waiting against. Always.
I'm sick of this shit. I'm sick of chickenshit fucks running around with guns looking for people to push around. I'm sick of white people insisting that we live in a post-racial society while they simultaneously gush about dumb shit like gangster rap and say, "YOLO!" I'm sick of chronic underfunding of schools in economically depressed areas while the police department gets to arm itself to the teeth with weapons better suited for combat than "Protecting and Serving." I'm sick of it all.
Peace out, bitches!
Monday, April 1, 2013
If you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball.
Work. Lots of work. Pain. Lots of pain. The two seem to go together more and more often with every passing year.
It's been fifteen years of The Suck. At any point along the timeline of my service to The Suck you could have found me wanting to quit and yet here I am fifteen years later. How? Why? What? Or there're the alternates to this: Dammit! How the Fuck did this happen? Goddammit! Why the fuck did this happen? and Fucking goddammit sonofabitch! What the fuck happened?
I have a very bad and persistent case of tendonitis in my right elbow and my right knee is starting to show signs of wanting to secede from the rest of my body. At least I still have all of my hair and can ollie a curb and chew my own food. I'm not completely useless just yet. I had the elbow looked at today. It was humbling. A very pretty therapist massaged my forearm (I'm still not sure this was part of the treatment) while asking me questions about work. In the end, she wrapped my arm with a compression sock and applied kinesio tape from my wrist up to my bicep. I'm to stop trying to lift things with my right arm. I'm to stop having anything in my right arm. I am, in short, to stop thinking that I even have a right arm. It must rest. I must ice it throughout the day. I've already had two Cortisone shots, one more and then the only option is surgery. Whacky doctors.
I may be falling apart slowly but surely I am still nimble enough to dodge the wrench, pull the focus, collect the check, and go home to my hot wife and my kids. That's all you really need anyway.
Well, that and some good surf now and again and duck season.
Peace out, bitches.
It's been fifteen years of The Suck. At any point along the timeline of my service to The Suck you could have found me wanting to quit and yet here I am fifteen years later. How? Why? What? Or there're the alternates to this: Dammit! How the Fuck did this happen? Goddammit! Why the fuck did this happen? and Fucking goddammit sonofabitch! What the fuck happened?
I have a very bad and persistent case of tendonitis in my right elbow and my right knee is starting to show signs of wanting to secede from the rest of my body. At least I still have all of my hair and can ollie a curb and chew my own food. I'm not completely useless just yet. I had the elbow looked at today. It was humbling. A very pretty therapist massaged my forearm (I'm still not sure this was part of the treatment) while asking me questions about work. In the end, she wrapped my arm with a compression sock and applied kinesio tape from my wrist up to my bicep. I'm to stop trying to lift things with my right arm. I'm to stop having anything in my right arm. I am, in short, to stop thinking that I even have a right arm. It must rest. I must ice it throughout the day. I've already had two Cortisone shots, one more and then the only option is surgery. Whacky doctors.
I may be falling apart slowly but surely I am still nimble enough to dodge the wrench, pull the focus, collect the check, and go home to my hot wife and my kids. That's all you really need anyway.
Well, that and some good surf now and again and duck season.
Peace out, bitches.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
For too long I've been parched of thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing. Not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea. Nor the warmth of a woman's flesh.
It's 5:30 in the morning and I'm coming apart at the seams. This is not a good thing.
I'm in Spain for work but it feels like I've been kidnapped. We've been down for almost a week. Contracts have changed. Sponsors have dropped out. We have no one to shoot.
I've been trying to keep it together, filling the hours with yoga, weights, running, skateboarding, beer and cigarettes. It's not quite working as I'm beginning to feel the thin veil of sanity that I'm wearing begin to fray. It will tear soon. This is not a good thing.
I've come to realize that among my legion of character defects is the inability to do nothing. Some of the guys on the crew are content with drinking heavily and hitting on whatever woman is unfortunate enough to be near them. Others are diligently working the Interwebs trying to set up next month's jobs. No one is having a good time.
I no longer want to be here. This job is falling apart. I haven't been able to sleep for days now no matter how hard I break myself during the day. Beer? Over it. Smoking? Over it. Skateboarding? Almost over it. Sight seeing? We're not exactly here during the season where anything is actually open. Alicante has been interesting though but...
I'm not on a vacation. If I were on a vacation I'd have my kids here and my wife and I wouldn't be rambling at 5:30 in the morning. I'm here to work. If there's no work then why am I here?
The added fuck you bonus of the whole thing is that The Company is sure to try and renegotiate our contract to reflect a decline in my take home money due to all of our down days. I'm gone all month and I will have made less than had I stayed home? Fuck you. Send me back now.
In theory we have everything set so that in another day or two (please, blessed holy unicorn don't let it be two days!) we will grind straight through until it's time to leave. All I can think of right now is how much I want to be in my bed with Stretch and Ghost sleeping at our feet and the kids in their beds and what do you guys want to do tomorrow?
It's the down time that's fucking killing me. I can't take the nothing.
Peace out, bitches!
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