The Wee Democracy

the onion

i've been reading the onion since 'our dumb century' came out a few years ago. anyways, in lieu of any real thought provoking ideas today, i'm just gonna toss out a dozen or so headlines that made me laugh lately...

COP KILLS OWN PARTNER, VOWS TO TRACK SELF DOWN

ZOMBIE CORPSE OF SCATMAN CROTHERS SPEAKS OUT AGAINST TELEMARKETING SCAMS

NEVADA TO PHASE OUT LAWS ALTOGETHER

SPAGHETTI-O'S DISCONTINUED AS FRANCO-AMERICAN RELATIONS BREAK DOWN

83-YEAR-OLD SNEAKS INTO 65-TO-80 SINGLES DANCE

LAST BEER IN SIX PACK DRUNK WITH PLASTIC RINGS STILL ATTACHED

DRUGS NOW LEGAL IF USER IS EMPLOYED

GLIMPSE OF GENE SHALIT ON TV REMINDS WOMAN IT'S TIME FOR BIKINI WAX

MCDONALD'S DROPS 'HAMMURDERER' CHARACTER FROM ADVERTISING

FATHER BITTER THAT SON HAS EVERYTHING HE NEVER HAD

8-MONTH-OLD SICK OF STARING AT POOH'S SMUG FACE ALL DAY

EXILED AMERICAN KING TRIUMPHANTLY RETURNS TO
WASHINGTON

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION POLITELY DECLINES SOFA FROM 'CHARLES IN CHARGE'

and finally...

BUSH SEEKS U.N. SUPPORT FOR 'U.S. DOES WHATEVER IT WANTS' PLAN



feeling: giggly
thinking of: sleepy
song of the day: no song today

karma

i was downtown tonight, after i got off work, walking from the train station to the bus stop. i saw a guy, probably about my age running with a desperation in his gait that means only one thing - the bus is pulling away. sure enough, i toss my peepers a bit further down the way, and see a bus stopped at a red light about a block away.

cut back to my man runnin his fool legs off, and i see a silver thing go a-flyin' from his pocket, and bounce along on the street, comepletely unbeknownst to him. ooh! a quarter, i think, and it's mine! all mine! i cross the street and pick it up, sliding it into my pocket, thinking, i need this for tomorrow's bus ride.

but, a bit further down the way, i see my man on those last final hops of a terminated run, adopting that dejected posture that can only say, damn you, bus driver.

i've been there before -- pumping my legs in dress pants, shoes and a tie, holding my bag, cursing under my breath for the driver who's leaving early, most of the time, for making me run....then not making it, giving a loud cry of "fuck" and catching your breath until the next bus shows up.

i take the quarter from my pocket, and walk over to the guy. "you dropped your quarter...when you were running."

"oh, thanks, man."

"sure....i've been there before."




feeling: alright
thinking of: ice
song of the day: fake plastic trees - radiohead
but i can't help the feeling i could blow through the ceiling, if i'd just turn and run

Garbage Epiphany

i should point out first that tuesday and friday is trash day. but the thing is, the trash man comes to the house, generally within a window of three to four hours after i've gone to bed, and therefore, it's my domestic chore to lug those bags o' crap out there before i go to bed monday and thursday nights.

so this is what i was doing last night, taking out the garbage, in the post-rain world, humidity snaking all around me. and i was compelled to look up. usually, i kinda just stare ahead when i'm walking, or look somewhat downward, a habit i picked up as a child after being traumatized by stepping on a most hated cockroach in my bare feet. grody.

so i'm not used to the vastness that you experience when you look up...i mean really look up. the sky goes on and on farther than i can even comprehend. i mean, think about a light year -- something that moves faster than i can think - literally, faster than neurons transmit - and it takes a full year to go this certain distance. and to think that the universe stretches for trillions of light years across. and looking up, you see how far that really is.

then i thought about how little i am in the context of this city, then in the context of this country, then the world. i'm a dot on this planet, and nothing that happens to me is of any real consequence. and even this planet isn't even a blip on the radar of the universe, so that makes my life seem even infinitessimally smaller, and my problems even moreso.

the epiphany i had then was that this world barely matters in the context of all things, and i barely matter in the context of the world, my problems should barely matter in the context of me. so given that all this shit barely matters in the long run, i should be able to put that crippling fear of failure in its proper context and move on to bigger and better things.

but it's still such an enormous task to undertake. even in the universal sense.



feeling: a bit overwhelmed
thinking of: how things were better when you could solve your problems with a sword.
song of the day: needle in the hay - elliott smith
you say you know what you did, but you idiot kid, you don't have a clue

Life Lessons from the Sopranos

i wrote about sex and the city quite some time ago, and at the end of that entry, i said i'd probably write about the sopranos soon. well, that was before the fifth season started, and now it's almost over - one more episode to go. now, be advised, if you're into the show, and you haven't been apprised of what's going on lately, and you don't want to know, read no further, cause i'm gonna be giving alot away.

there are just a frickin' bunch of things i love about the show -- the characters are so fallible, and emotionally honest. i mean, tony's a criminal, a chronic philanderer, a stone cold murderer, but you like him. and more often than not, you find yourself sympathizing with him. mainly, its because you know where he's coming from, even if he doesn't, and you feel like he's got so many opportunities to do right, the frustration with him mounts as he continually does the wrong thing.

the show is so unflinching about violence. recently, adriana, a more-or-less innocent, if severly naive, girlfriend to one of the mobsters got killed. what i liked about this, as a show, was that it was so fucking cold. i mean, i knew ahead of time what was going to happen, but it was so well constructed, so intelligently crafted, that i still had knots in my stomach. sylvio, a pretty level headed guy, did it. and what made it so horrible was that five minute before he dragged her out of the car into the woods, he was putting his hand on her shoulder and consoling her about something else. like he really cared. then he grabbed her by the hair, called her a cunt and shot her, as she crawled away. these people are fucking animals. there's no getting around it, but you tune in every week, and want them to win.

the ugly scenes are ugly, and not in a phoney way. not in the way where you see some actress on the tv playing a bitch like she's revelling in the role of playing a bitch. the characters on the sopranos play the roles, simply and honestly, and if someone's supposed to be disliked, that will come across naturally. not because the writers beat you over the head with it.

the writing itself is the best writing on television. a while back, janice, tony's sister, killed her fiance. then, three years later, janice gets into a fight with a soccer mom, and later says "that bitch is lucky i didn't kill her". tony says "oh, we know that." then looks at her. that's it, a silent, barely recognizable reference to the fact that she shot her lover in the fuckin face! the looks sell it. damn! i get so excited about shit like that.

stuff pays off like that, sometimes years down the road. and characters barely referenced in the first couple of seasons have major importance in later years - i.e. johnny sack. a ruthless python of a man.

i'm rambling now, but there's so much i get so excited about. even the theme song. i jump up and down for a bit, then i drop two octaves and sing along with it.

best show in the history of televison.



feeling: like a five season sopranos marathon
thinking of: fleeing!
song of the day: no song today

victory dance

after a positively dreadful monday, i was thinking it was going to be a shitty week. i mean, hell, i started tuesday on three hours sleep and with a full day of work to look forward to? yipee.

but, i did alright. and halfway through the workday, i skipped across the street to target and picked up the return of the king. keep your anti-dork jeers to yourself! those little hobbits were brave! i also decided what exactly to do for my mom for her birthday, which is tomorrow. anytime i decide what to get people as presents, i'm pretty happy about it.

sequiter. i like buying people little things. it's not because i'm trying to buy approval, or to make people like me. it's because i take some kind of vicarious joy in surprises. when i was a kid, i used to think and get excited thinking that maybe my mom would bring me a surprise present when she came home from work. maybe i wanted that because i wanted a sign that i was loved, which troubles me some, what with the whole materialism as love factor, but what can i say? i liked toys. so, sometimes i just like seeing the expression on the person's face. or just doing something without an expectation of a return.

wait, no, i'm an approval whore. and a liar, apparently.

back to tuesday...

so i went back to work, and then got off at five. i was tryin' to hustle out of the store when the bells rang, cause the bus was coming in like, two minutes, and i had to walk across the parking lot, and it's a long walk. so i head out, walk down the outside stairs and see the bus...rollin' away. shit, i say to myself...but i don't get too upset. i start back the other way, thinking maybe i can cut across the entire mall parking lot and get to the other stop -- it's maybe a seven minute trek.

jog, i say to myself, don't run, cause you'll just get winded and end up walking. so i jog, and i make it about 2/3's of the way there when i see the bus again, rollin' away again! but i don't get mad. i start walking, and i see another bus! then i run! and i make it and it's the 184.

the 184, i find out rather quickly, takes me far into downtown, where i can take a train, and it does so via the tollway, so it only takes like 20 minutes!

a train comes just as i sit down at the station!

a bus arrives ten minutes after i get off the train! i'm home in just over an hour, which is unfuckingprecedented!! victory is mine!!

what? what? 24 season finale?! don't mind if i do! another victory!!

today? what? success in buying my mom's presents? another speed-record breaking bus adventure? sure! why not?

the sopranos arriving in the mail? VICTORY!! VICTORY!! VICTORY!

huzzah!



feeling: happy
thinking of: how 'huzzah' needs to come back into common usage
song of the day: polyester bride - liz phair
you're lucky you even know me. you're lucky to be alive. you're lucky to be drinking here for free, cause i'm a sucker for your lucky pretty eyes.

John Kennedy Toole

I'd love to be John Kennedy Toole. except for the whole suicide thing. read his books - they're newly linked on the right.


pavlov's crotch

due to the amazing job done by lapdance artist elizabeth of sugar's in austin, i now have a conditioned response to the no doubt song "underneath it all". it's really quite funny.


job

i'm not going to be a teacher after all. i'm aimless, once again. aim me to the city, big man. aim me, well.


girlfriend
i want one. gimme.



feeling: alright, i suppose
thinking of: sleep
song of the day: tonight, tonight - the smashing pumpkins
believe in me, as i believe in you

...

and the hits just keep onnnnnnnnnnnnn comin'

Application

i've decided to take applications for new friends. please fill out the following form, and email express to "friendship application" c/o weedemocracy@yahoo.com. it's free, and full of perks and excitement! take a look!


Name:
Age:
Hometown:
Sign:


Please tell us a little bit about yourself, by answering the following questions.

FAVORITES
1. What is your favorite mixed drink and/or beer? _______________
2. What is your favorite cereal? _______________
3. What is, in your opinion, the best curse word, or phrase? ____________________
4. What is your favorite scary movie?________________
5. What is your favorite animal on the planet? _______________
6. What is your favorite stuffed animal and their name? ____________________
7. What are three of your favorite foods?_________________, _______________, and _______________

WHAT IF...
8. If I were a superhero/villain, I'd be:_______________
9. If I were a dinosaur, I'd be: _______________
10. If I were to be arrested for stalking a celebrity, it would be:_______________
11. If I could be a singer, I'd be:_______________
12. If I could have my dream job, it would be:___________________

THIS OR THAT
13. Weed: fine family fun, or the seed of evil?____________________
14. Pepsi or Coke?__________
15. Betty or Wilma?__________
16. Elvis or the Beatles?__________
17. Porn: a jolly good time, or offensive, and degrading towards women? ____________________
18. Cell Phones: practical savior, or technological bane? ___________________

THE LAST....
19. The last movie you saw that kicked your ass:_______________
20. The last book you read:_______________
21. The last cd you took out of your cd player:_______________

WRAP IT UP
22. What amount of money would make your life near perfect? (no altruism, money makes everything better)________________________________
23. What was your worst job?__________________________________
24. What is your preferred state of footwear?__________________________
25. What do you spend too much money on?_________________________
26. What is the best television show in the history of television?__________________

CONCLUSION
27. In fifty words or less, what do you bring to the table of josh, as far as friendship goes? _____________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________

Thank you for your interest in becoming my friend!




feeling: pretty hopeless
thinking of: escape
song of the day: romeo and juliet - the dire straits
i dreamed your dream for you, and now your dream is real

lies and the lying liars

i love tv. my teacher, mother, secret lover. and in that time i estimate that i've watched somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 thousand hours of television, which breaks down into three to three and a half years of my total life. now, if you figure that about a third of that time is television proper, and not movies, or HBO, that's about a year. and if you figure that a third of that is commercials, i've been made a lot of empty promises.

i've been lied to. the following claims made by commercials are entirely fallacious:

1 - a razor, no matter how good, cool, or technologically advanced it is, will not shave your face so amazingly that a beautiful woman will walk up to you in a bar and mug down with you immediately.

2 - in the same vein, ordering a particular beer is not an acceptable pick up line. in fact, beer in proper bars is more for frat boys and kids with fake ID's.

3 - when you are "irregular", a kindly, if not a tad socially stunted, elderly black woman will not magically appear with milk of magnesia, and a little public embarassment, holding the bottle like she was on the price is right. you have to buy your own damn bottle.

4 - no shampoo, i don't care how good it smells or how long you use it, will make you cum in the shower. not as long as you're using it on your head.

5 - gential herpes is NOT what's been holding you back from hang gliding or rock climbing. fear of a brutal death upon jagged rocks is.

6 - a lawyer that advertises on channel 27 at two in the morning should probably not be your first line of defense.

7 - talking animals are creepy, i don't care if they're selling cat litter or baked beans.

8 - tampons will not save a sinking boat. i mean, it's not duct tape, people.

9 - a grocery store commercial which prattles on about how much you're saving is lying. if you had no intention of buying your groceries elsewhere, you're not saving crap. you're spending all you set out to spend.

10 - changing the words to bad bubblegum pop songs from the 50's (i.e. la bamba)to suit your advertising needs is NOT, i repeat, NOT a good thing. it is, most assuredly, a suggestion of the dark prince, and should be ignored, for the love of god.

11 - the keebler elves put poison in the cookies.

and finally...

12 - red bull does not give you the power of flight. red bull with PCP, however, will.




feeling: a terribly pain in my back
thinking of: nothing at all
song of the day: imagine - john lennon
you may say i'm a dreamer, but i'm not the only one

victorious days

there are days, days where the tumblers fall easily into place, the universe unlocks for you, and you thrust your arms up in the air, in triumph. triumph over what, you may ask? over the possibility that your day could suck.

there was a conversation smoot and i had one time in the last couple of years, about how you can be walking down the street and someone can decide, simply to ruin your day, and with the easiest of methods. you could just be strolling down the drag, basking in some minor glory, and some foo could just say "hey", smile at you and say, "fuck you." boom. day ruined.

or, you could get up, feel good about everything going on, life in your new apartment, getting your schedule all together, enjoying the smell of your new books, your crisp new sheets...the place all your own. then a terse email lets you know "hey, you're fired." bam. day ruined.

but today is tuesday, which is always my day off. and then 24 comes on, and that rocks to high heaven. but there's a day that comes every two weeks or so. when the mailbox bulges, and the soft off-white tone of the padded envelope peeks out and you know...the sopranos have arrived.

that is the best show in the history of television.



feeling: satisfied
thinking of: tomorrow
song of the day: your song - elton j.
i know its not much, but its the best i can do

rise of the sighs

a bit of bad news today. i was strolling into the stock room which doubles as my boss's office, and my locker room, happy as a lark, when deanna, that's my boss, hems and haws for a moment before revealing that she's been offered a job elsewhere. now, by wednesday, i'll know whether or not i've got the job as a teacher, and so that's the point whereat i'll decide if i'm for her leaving or four-square against it.

i'll admit, my motivations are selfish. she's the closest thing to a friend i've got in this town, and we don't even hang out outside of work. so if i had to keep on working there, at the store, even if just to make the money to pick up stakes and head to the NYC, i'd still have to do it with a minimal of conversation, which would be practically unbearable. it would go back to being the worst job i've ever had.

this got me thinking, on the way home, about times when i've had to adjust to them being not a part of my daily life. like when i left my best friend in high school got the boot, and i had to go it alone for a while.

that time i was walking to subway, at the end of my freshman year in college (i told you about it at the beginning of the month), i was thinking about how it would be for three months without my best friends being right down the hall. and it sucked, which is why that was the last summer i spent at home...until i graduated. ugh.

and then right before the end of junior year, when damon left austin, to go to europe then to new orleans for law school. that was pretty devastating. he was my best, closest friend at that point, so it was hard, really hard to see him go.

i hate goodbyes pretty much, is what i'm saying. when i left austin, i barely told anybody. some friends from work, smoot, a couple of other people. but mostly, i just packed up and left. alot easier that way.

i guess the primal worry behind the whole thing is that you think the people that leave you will eventually replace the part of their life that you filled with something or someone else. it happens in youth, why shouldn't it happen later? you break up with one girlfriend, you get another. you have your friends in college, then your friends from work, then your friends from your neighborhood, and your kids play together, all leading, ultimately, to the point where you have to adapt to them not being around.

friendship is a dangerous thing. please stop it, before it gets out of control.



feeling: moribund
thinking of: praying, really, that i get the gig
song of the day: look at me - john lennon
who am i supposed to be?

late night with josh

it's quite late, friday night, or saturday morning, whatever your disposition towards labeling days may lead you to decide. me, personally, i like to think that the day's not over until i've gone to sleep, or until the sun has come up, whichever comes first, though usually i'm not strong enough to wait out the latter.

this night feels very odd, and yet, almost wholly appropriate. it is dead silent outside, and all the lights down the street are off. it seems as though this is a post apocolyptic neighborhood, and the only thing that's breaking this imagery is the street lamp on the corner.

you'd think the owner of 100+ dvd's would find something to watch, but i'm not feeling any of that right now. mainly i'm just feeling terribly numb. kind of in limbo, like i should be either doing something, or commit myself to doing nothing. i'm having a problem with commitment.

i don't know who i was relating it to, but sometime in the recent past, i was describing what i feel like when i start drinking. it feels, basically, like i'm playing the video game of josh. some ultra advanced avatar that gives me mechanical power over this meat sack that is my body. i picture krang, that disembodied brain from the teenage mutant ninja turtles cartoon, who inhabited the midriff of a giant android, and held little joysticks with his brainy tentacles. it's a very sensory experience, especially for someone like me who so regularly retreats to the dank recesses of the basement of my mind. feeling that physical freedom allows me to bask in the grooviness of my body.

i know that i told you guys about thinking about myself in the third person a few days ago, and i feel that that warrants some explanation, so that it doesn't come off too narcissistic.

and i'm paraphrasing burian here, although its by no means an original idea, that sometimes you get in the habit of imagining your life as a really long arthouse neo-realism film, with a sometimes killer soundtrack and some great nudity, but mostly its filled with some really pretentious sleeping sequences, stupid dialogue, awkward silences, and some really mortifying masturbation scenes. i think of that bit in trainspotting, the movie, where renton narrates his life in the club in the third person.

josh imagines his life as a black comedy, and hopes that in the end, there will be some edifying climax, some life altering decision to be made, and order will be imposed, peace will reign, and all will live happily ever after. however, we've got to get past those really long drawn out sad parts, first.

so, i've got myself thinking about myself from a distance already, within this cinematic framework, and then i stamp it with my own brand of insecurity, which takes me even further out of myself, and into the my ideas of the perceptions of other people of me. get it? i find myself thinking about what other people are thinking about me. it gets quite tiresome, easy.

but really, as i stated before, all this does is serve to distance me even further from myself, until i get lost in what i think other people are thinking about me, and i barely have any idea about what i think about myself.

which leads me to questions regarding my identity. identity these days is so wrapped up in easy to define categories: a person is what they do, where they live, where they went to school, who they're with, all these things that are wrapped up in other people's perceptions. so that's why i've been trying to change the whole pattern of third person thinking.

when i was in NY, i made it a point, when i caught myself thinking like that, like say, if i thought, he (being me) feels really sad right now, and just wants to be left alone, i would stop, go back, and think I feel really sad right now...blah blah blah. i'm trying to own my persona, and iron out my own perception of my identity.

however, it is still quite cool to think about your life in a cinematic sense, if you're doing it for some aesthetic reason. like, if i was riding the bus, looking out the window, and i could imagine the framing of my face, my beautiful face, and the soundtrack of whatever i was listening to playing over the shot. that's cool. and it's not part of the narrative structure, so it carries no psychological impact.

i'm trying to see how i got to this point in my train of thought, and i'm guessing that times like this, when it is so dead outside, there's nothing on tv, and you can't even muster up the initiative for a late night jerk before bed, the whole life-as-cinema thing takes a turn for the ultimate pretention in neo-realism. and i'm not about pretension, so for me, it kind of hit a brick wall.



feeling: my eyes are getting heavy...very heavy.
thinking of: sleeping with better posture
song of the day: sleepwalk - santo and johnny

updates

e-mailaise
i've received only two emails in the last 10 days. two were from my sister, and one from tessa, this is, i must say, quite sad. my self-esteem is very much linked to the approval of others, so let's go people!! i haven't heard from some of you in quite some time, and i'm a tad bit worried, too. email! email!

interview
i interviewed today with DISD, which was alot longer and more formal than i had anticipated. the lady was very nice, and she said that she was impressed with my cover letter, which i had written in haste about 12 hours before i turned in my completed application. rock on. it was also nice to hear, at the end, her saying that "you did real well!". i rock more!

not to mention, that i straight up looked HOT in my suit. seriously ladies. you would have melted, like in that elizabeth arden commercial.

the apprentice's kristi and A
not news about me, per se, but still riveting. did you know that kristi frank, the first girl on the apprentice to be fired was in a soft core porn movie? yeah! it was a chapter of the red shoe diaries, called swimming naked, and evidently, she was quite that. awesome.

ERR! nerd alert
sorry, but i'm excited that the last lord of the rings movie is coming out on dvd in a week and a half. i'm very excited. damn me if you must, but the movie was pretty cool.

haircut
i got a haircut today, the first in months, before the interview. it looks pretty good, and my hair being shorter, and thus, less weighty, makes it more poofy in the back, and covers up my burgeoning bald spot. which, i also must inform you, was poo poo'd by the barber, who said, "this isn't thin, son." i gave him a big tip.

i want to be ben gibbard
what? i want to be ben gibbard. it's pretty self explanatory.




feeling: relaxed
thinking of: brownies
song of the day: angel band - the stanley brothers
my latest sun is sinking fast, my race is nearly run. my strongest trials now are past, my triumph has begun

an idle king

i have favorite episodes of most of my favorite tv shows. usually, they're the ones which i can apply, with some degree of relevance, to my own life.

so tonight was the series finale of 'frasier', and i must admit a much more emotional reaction to the show than i expected. i figured it would fit somewhere in between the finales of sex and the city, which i loved, and friends, which i think needed to be outright cancelled some four years ago...but that's just me.

i never really got into frasier's whole search for romance thing, mainly because he commonly screwed up good things left and right. i was more into niles and daphne, and the whole unrequited love bit. that one episode where niles took daphne to a dance, and he let how he felt slip out, only to have her (fictitiously) return them, is probably my all time fav.

anyways, in tonight's episode, frasier recited the last few lines from tennyson's poem "ulysses". it really is a great poem, and my thanks go out to andy c for opening up my pallete to the british romantics. here, let me reprint the best parts:

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

i'm interviewing tomorrow with the school district, and i'm scared. but i'm gonna remember me some tennyson and give it my best shot.



feeling: inspired
thinking of: when i get my own place
song of the day: oh, sister - bob dylan
time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore

hell, even i own a pipe

just look at it for yourself...it's funny.

Hey Crackhead!

fucked up dream

if you've read about my dreams before, you know they can be quite jacked up. and the scary part is, they can be pretty easily influenced by whatever i've exposed myself to within the last few days. like, if i see a tornado on the news, i might have a tornado dream shortly thereafter. after i saw 'scream', i had a utterly horrifying serial killer dream, and after watching 'predator', i had a dream where i was being chased through a jungle...and you know how much i hate running.

which is why last night's dream was weird. it was about a volcano that began erupting under my house.

i go outside for some reason, and i see a hole in the lawn, about as big around as a basketball. there's a little bit of steam rising from it so i go to look at it, and about 6 feet down, i see lava flowing under the yard. i freak, and go inside to try to get my mom and my sister out of the house. i try to call 911, but i don't get anybody, and no one seems to believe me that there's a burgeoning volcano in our yard. i look out front, and see another hole open up, closer to the house, and this time, it spits lava out, which hits my mom's old maxima. the tires explode and the car itself begins to burn and melt. i am grateful that it is the max, and not the camry, because i figure, somehow i'll get blamed for this mess, and the destruction of a car is rather unforgivable.

then the lava starts exploding up out of the ground, and the camry is engulfed in flames rather quickly. i'm scared now. the house begins to sink, and i see the ground rising up to meet the base of the picture window, dirt becoming visible, like through a porthole on a ship. i'm screaming, actually yelling out "mommy" i'm so scared now, because the ground is rising faster. the house is plummeting into the ground, and i know it's only a matter of time before it hits the lava and i melt.

but somehow, the house is lifted back up, and i get out, i run out to the street, feeling safer on concrete, watching the lava fly and burst. people start to gather round. then i wake up.

i get out of bed, knowing it was a dream, but still go out to the front yard. i walk around, feeling the ground with my bare feet, looking for uneven spots, using my toes to feel for holes, but the only one i find is a bug hole. i go out back and look around, feeling for holes, and see nothing. then i step in one, big and deep and i see lava flowing quickly beneath it, and it scares the everloving hell out of me.

then i really wake up. and the thing is, this is not the first time i've woken up within a dream. fucked up dreams sometimes, man.



feeling: grateful i live in a seismically stable region
thinking of: nothin' really
song of the day: sweetest thing - U2
you can sew it up, but you still see the tear

an open letter

dear god,

please smite kobe bryant, and all cockroaches on the face of this planet. not metaphorical cockroaches, like kobe bryant, but the actual crunchy bugs that disgust me to absolutely no end.

love, josh

ps. you rock

it's a helluva town

so really this entry begins last thursday night, where the airline security of DFW airport failed to spot that i did not take off my belt, nor did they search my bag which contained a pair of handcuffs (long story) that i apparently left in there since my move from austin last august. then, once on the plane, i experience what can only be described as class envy. i see the stewardesses handing out actual rolled up hot towels to the pampered fatcats, and i feel a strong sense of envy at the vastness of their arm and leg room, while i'm cramped into my coach seat, my arms firmly clamped at my sides, making sure that don't become an interloper into other people's coveted seat space.

i caught some shuteye on the plane, lulled into a peaceful bliss by jeff buckley, whom, i might add, was used so righteously in the season finale of the OC. i brought my camera with me on the trip, but mostly just took pictures of stupid things, not new york sigtseeing-y type landmarks.

new york is one of those places where as soon as i get there, i feel out of place, lost in a sea of people too cool for school, and i feel very insecure. i notice that i think about myself alot in the third person while there. this is a habit i consciously try to break as soon as we land. he is not thinking about himself like this anymore. i am not thinking about myself like this anymore. i decide, waiting outside a bathroom in laguardia airport, that i will not be detached from myself anymore.

my sister's place in greenpoint is pretty close to the east river, and if you just looked at her street, it would look like a pretty cool place to live. but manhattan ave., which is just at the end of her street, is pretty sketchy, filled to the rafters with polish stores which sell maps, polish translations of harry potter novels, and eastern european incarnations of playboy, which i am mildly curious to peruse.

her place is somewhat emptier than i remember it, and a little lonelier, but she's got a really cool selection of music to listen to, and she had a recent issue of burn collector ready for me when i got in. rock on, sistah. her friend jill is there, and i will discuss her later, but first, we must eat.

the arrival at anytime, a joint in brooklyn, is a prime example of this whole coolness issue thing. i'm trying to not to revert to my old tricks. he walks into the place and sits down. despite trying desperately to look like he belongs, he cannot hide the fact that he is terribly sad and uncomfortable right now. he is an unwelcome guest. see? it can get pretty easy pretty fast to do that.

I cannot hide my discomfort as i walk into this place. I feel very unwelcome. but this measure towards better mental health really deserves its own entry, so we'll progress with a more thorough recap of the trip.

friday is a good day, as, refreshed, we make our foray into manhattan. despite my utter disdain for the anti-fat fashion industry, i do spot a shirt that i like in a club monaco, and i am indulged. however, the pleasure that i get from this is somewhat lessened a short time later, when, in a diesel jeans store, i cannot even squeeze into a XXL jacket, keeping in mind that the american made jacket i wear now is a regular ol' L. damn italians.

outside though, i am gripped by a sheer sense of blog-oriented excitement as i find ANOTHER toy dinosaur on the street. this is quickly replaced by a sense of utter horror, though, as i look up to see myself about twelve feet from a semi conscious woman lying in the avenue, a foot or two in front of the cab that hit her. her condition remains unknown to me, but i think her mouth was moving. this probably would have affected me more were i not witness about a year and a half ago to a bus-pedestrian collision on UT campus that seemed, at first glance, far worse. and that girl turned out to be a-ok.

dinner at a subpar chinese joint.

friday night am i given too much to drink and smoke at the pencil factory, a very fun little bar in greenpoint, where my sister and i are joined by travis, from work, and her friend jill. travis was cool as hell, and we talked about movies alot, and insecurity, honesty being one of those things that comes far too easily for me once the devil's sauce is poured recklessly down my gullet. jill is nice to a fault. she is completely disarming with her kindness and seemingly geniune interest including me in the conversation. it's like someone who comes up to the great wall you've built up inside your head and just knocks. it's very disturbing. revelations are made while i am completely trashed, and i am finding it very interesting that i have recently made an entry into ye olde blog about adaptation.

saturday is mostly wasted by my mom who spends the better part of the productive day sleeping, then sitting in a salon unisex down the street. leah, jill and i pass that time watching, and very sparingly helping jill make a freakishly good cake and drinking bloody marys and white russians.

bloomingdale's, dinner at va tutto, party at dan's. dan lives in park place, and is giving leah a dvd player, which is, as the french say, fuckin' cool. once again, i am corrupted by this rowdy devil's brigade, and once again, find myself quite the innebriate within a matter of about 90 minutes. but the conversations flow, and i enjoy a healthy discussin of underrated x-men with leah's friend JP. we both remember and love one particular issue of x-factor where the mutants all submit themselves to psych interviews with doc samson. multiple man rocked.

sunday is equally slow going, with only some shopping getting done. dinner is at a place called lavagna, which gives me the best pasta i've ever had. not to mention the irish waitress, who, if i ever move to NY, i will promptly return to lavagna solely to ask her out.

there is a rat in the sewer. my mom and i watch a shitty movie called picnic, after i finish the opposite of sex, which is equally shitty.

all in all, it proved to be another trip where i was dying to be back in my bed in my home with my toys, up until the last day, where i would trade it all to stay in the city.



feeling: clean
thinking of: 24 - dudes and dudettes, that show is off the chain
song of the day: just what i needed - the cars
it doesn't matter where you been, as long as it was deep

disheartened

so i wrote a really long blog about my trip to New York this weekend. then my internet explorer crashed, and i lost the fucker. i'm too pissed and tired to try to rewrite it tonight, but rest assured. i'll give it another crack tomorrow.

fuck, man.



feeling: part of the dispirited, disenfranchised, discouraged, denegrated denizens of the dememonde that is called the ghetto.
thinking of: exploding
song of the day: yasmin the light - explosions in the sky

here we go, again

now...i'm a flying dot.




feeling: stopped up
thinking of: i dunno, sleepy
song of the day: hallelujah - jeff buckley (did you guys see the OC last night? they played buckley over the ending montage...it was really quite effective)
well there was a time when you let me know what's really going on below, but now you never show that to me, do ya

super-virus-creator-beater-upper-guy

i'm tossing around names in my head of my superhero name were i to go after the virus-creator douchebags and beat them to their respective pulps. as i type, tuesday morning, at an ungodly hour, listening to elevator music that is truly godawful, i'm waiting to be helped by the microsoft people to rid me of the now-evidently more-of-a-pain-in-the-ass-than-i-originally-thought sasser worm virus. i'm having to use a laptop, which i'm not all that comfortable typing on.

i'd like to imagine that the rat-bastard who created this is a pimply faced loser with cheetos crumbs in his teeth and descending down the front of his babylon 5 t-shirt as well, and that he's simply acting out his childish rage on the world by the only means available to him - worldwide nuisance induction. why can't he just drink heavily and blog? like me? who knows.

either way, my computer is sacred to me. it's got all my work from college, alot of my music, and my porn, good lord, my tons and tons of porn!

anyways, you should really hear this muzak i'm being subjected to. i'm convinced its deliberately awful in an effort to reduce call volume by driving people away after 15 minutes of nonstop crappiness. personally, i'm on the verge of seizure and considering what exactly the nature of hell is, assuming that if music is allowed there, it is something of this ilk, or perhaps, far worse, though something that horrible is beyond comprehension to me.

what keeps me going though is the fun idea of finding the russian (the news people seem to think that's where it originated, this virus) and grabbing the greasy chucklehead that created this thing and beating him down with either a lead pipe, a board with nail in it, or a broken beer bottle and a rolled up copy of hustler.

which reminds me of a story! when i was in high school, i was pretty chronically tardy, and when i got to school i actually had to sign in with the reason why i was late. they only gave you an area about an inch and a half across and a third of an inch tall to fill in your reason, about enough to write "overslept" or "traffic" or "late night cocaine binge". but one day, i went for the gusto. i used the entire column to explain how late the previous night, columbian drug lords had attempted to take over my neighborhood, and it was up to me to fight them off with a broken beer bottle and a rolled up copy of hustler. it took several hours and by the time i emerged as victor, i was quite tired, and therefore overslept. this excuse did not fly with the powers that be, and they ripped out the entire page of signatures and had to re-copy them. i considered this a moral victory of epic proportions (a word which i can never be entirely sure i have spelled correctly).

so if this virus creator knows what's good for him, he'll show up on my doorstep and fix my computer. after all, i took out a columbian drug racket when i was in high school, so he can imagine what kind of smackdown incurring my wrath will get him now.




feeling: angry, dude
thinking of: new york by tomorrow night, baby!!
song of the day: lullaby - emit rhodes
sing a lullaby. sing it soft and only sigh. when the one you love says goodbye, sing a lullaby.

i guess i can be political, too

i've been thinking about my perception of current events lately. i suppose i should begin by saying that i'm not so much democratic as i am just staunchly anti-republican. you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of mentality. i saw george w. today on the world news w/ dan rather at a rally in ohio, talking about how john kerry is already planning on spending a trillion dollars, and bush doesn't know where he's gonna get that. this from the man who cannot tell us how much he's spent on iraq, which, let's call a spade a spade here, was cowboy posturing by that man.

then i got to thinking about how he didn't even go to vietnam, but he's got absolutely no problem sending and spending all we've got to iraq, meanwhile chastising the war record of a man who got wounded and has fuckin' shrapnel in his body, and STILL had the sack to come back to the US and protest the war.

then i got to thinking about 9/11 and how, according to my thinking, something horrific like that was just what the doctor ordered as far as reason enough to go to war for sr. bush. i mean, it drums up horror, resentment toward the middle east, the mentality of "let's go get those bastards!", and a semi-solid base of support at doing anything to end terrorism, which, calling a spade a spade AGAIN, is a bit like fighting the war on drugs...it's shoveling shit against the tide.

then, i found a documentary i recorded on pbs last year about the conception, construction and eventual demise of the world trade center. i see video of all that, i flash back to spending that day almost entirely in my dorm room, watching the news all day long -- and i hate the news -- and still trying to wrap my head around the concept, trying to see and actually believe that planes were deliberately crashed into the building.

i was talking to my mom, who lived through the JFK assassination, and was actually at the motorcade about 10 minutes before he got shot. you see, i grew up with JFK's death as part of the history of things that preceded my life. the attack at pearl harbor falls into this category of things so utterly horrible that are accepted as reality, because it's all i've ever known. i didn't have to adapt to these new changes. and with all due respect, presidents had been assassinated before, and countries had been attacked by surprise before. but this...i don't think anyone had seen anything on this scale of unimagined horror since, well maybe, hiroshima?

i guess the point i'm trying to make here, in this maudlin entry, is that i'm still coming to grips with the concrete fact that such a blind seething hatred exists against us as a country, and that it can be focused and utilized toward unfathomable ends, and that to fight this sort of thing, we gotta get someone in charge who isn't going to use it to finance, spiritually and literally, his personal agenda of warfare. but that's just my opinion.

oh yeah, foley's, i found out, decided to stay open for business on 9/11. isn't that nice?



feeling: hot, bothered
thinking of: being in NY by the end of the week, baby
song of the day: this place is a prison - the postal service
I know there's a big world out there like the one i saw on the screen In my living room late last night, It was almost too bright to see

what if someone calls us a pair of pathetic peripatetics?

is it me, or did may just get here way too fucking fast? there was a point toward the end of my freshman year, and i believe it was at the beginning of may, that i was walking to subway to get a sandwich. i remember the sunset, the warm feeling on my face, noticing how brisk my pace was walking from jester to dobie, remembering how it seemed like a long walk the first couple of times i did it. i was sad then, thinking about the friends i was gonna have to do without for a whole summer, lamenting the fact that almost none of us were going to be living in the same place anymore and that bond was going to be broken. but, i reasoned, in a very uncharacteristically optimistic tone, i've still got three years of college to go! three years! i've got plenty of time, man.

in 15 days i will officially have been out of school for one year, drifting aimlessly almost just as long. you see, this idea shakes me to the core. where did those three years go? they seemed to take so long as they were happening, but good lord. i remember so much of what happened five years ago like it was last night.

rolling my heavy ass trunk down the hall to my questionably smelling room. dusting things. taking a shower. watching tv with the door open, trying to make friends, creating a new josh that was cool and outgoing -- ok, that didn't last. being vastly impressed by the water pressure in the dorm shower.

i remember clearly the excitement coursing through my body when i was putting together my dorm room, just as i'd imagined it, in one of the few instances where reality came close to matching fantasy. of course, my fantasies often including midgets, candy, ladies of the night, and a mattress without a huge fuckin' crater in the middle that sucked all life into its void never to be seen again!! damn you mattress.

i remember going to a late night showing of trainspotting with some of my new friends in that first week at the dorm. i remember going to a looooooooooong dry-ass sunday morning service at a baptist church to get on the good side of a girl. i remember how awesome it was to have the room to myself for that first week, before my roommate showed up.

it was all so full of promise. how was it five years ago?



feeling: nostalgic, clearly
thinking of: smoking
song of the day: tuesday's gone - lynyrd skynyrd
train roll on many miles from my home. see i'm...riding my blues away

they grow up so fast!

i was sitting at the train station this evening, after a slow day at the office, and as i was just about to place my little earwigs in my ears, three juveniles walked up the stairs to the platform talking about the barely-post-pubescent girls they were oogling on the bus a few minutes prior.

this one kid starts chiding the other one for his pick, laying into him with that attitude of all knowingness, a self styled connoiseur of the ladies, a playa, a complete nincompoop, demanding explanation for picking a girl "with no ass....no ass! and no titties!" i wanted to let them know that 14 was generally not the point in life where females tend to cease maturation, but they knew it all.

then this one kid said something to me, but the soothing sounds of explosions in the sky were away in my ears, and i didn't hear it. i can't imagine it was anything terribly bright. what the holy crap do 14 year old boys really know about girls anyway?

stupid kids.



feeling: pissed, man. i think my computer has a virus
thinking of: sleepy time
song of the day: innocent when you dream - tom waits
i made a golden promise that we would never part. i gave my love a locket, and then i broke her heart.