Tassels Are The Only Proper Send Off

I had decided my funeral would be some type of odd memorial where there was no body and no one was sure entirely that I hadn't just joined some random revolution. Whether or not I got euthanized by execution would be an enduring mystery. There would be rumors of me living in the hills of (insert country here), holed up with a new, young and native wife. Rumors would be that I was cavorting among the bushes and a new tribe of brown-skinned children with blue eyes and home-made rock hammers could be found nestled in a mysterious valley.

That was the plan.

Then I found a much better memorial arrangement. I obviously can never have my funeral in China now, but hopefully I can get the ceremonial ball rolling before it's illegal here, too.

Just send the one with the lop-sided implants my way and stick a rolled up dollar bill in between my blue lips one last time, please. If I'm already laid up, it don't matter how many pathogens she may be hiding in her person.

All I Can Do

I had a good buddy one time. He used to have a sweet tooth for some Wild Turkey and he had a tendency towards irrational behavior, we had a lot in common. Not that I would let him get into my Turkey, but the guy was huge; he sort of got what he wanted. He had an interesting part in my life for a short, and sometimes tragic, time. We used to enjoy eating dinner together and watching the paint on the walls fade to an even duller antiseptic white. He would wake me up for work and remind me I had obligations when I forgot I still had reasons to breathe in and out. He was a good guy. I would defend him to the last. When I had to leave, I told him to live with my mom and dad for awhile to keep them going.

I make him sound like some type of little brother. In truth, he was usually the grown up. He would take care of me and do the best an independent man can do for another independent man when comfort or a shoulder to cry on is needed. We were brothers without the inborn hierarchy of birth order.

He went on to whatever reward or anticlimax waits to meet us all when we lose our individuality to the engines of Life. I loved the guy. He died shamed and alone. He never knew what he did. His psychic pain took him out of civilization for good. He's been turned to ash.The crystalline structure of a diamond is that of an octahedron. They are octahedral in nature because that's all they can be. Carbon can only bond with seven brothers in such a way. Shoreline critters and plants in the fires of a subduction zone, the organic matter of a continental shelf, the Life, is poured into the forges of Vulcanus and catalyzed and purified into the basic building blocks of the one true individuality. In the loss of the temporal bodies to this terrible maw of famine and extinctions and illness, they prove that there is some order, there is some Platonic Idea of perfection. They never see it, but they prove the mystery simply by having existed to fuel the engines of survival for this little chunk of carbon we call life. Heaven may or may not be, but by passing on, Duck the Dog proved that he is perfect. In the gleaming white robe washed in the blood of time, he is one of the elect.I had a very close friend lose someone who was closer to them. Somehow, I don't think this is going to help.

Sorry.

Damn that guy

I have more than one voice in my head. While I am a ray of fucking sunshine at all times and only leave the world with the coziness of rose petals and tender Balian honey, The Devil's Advocate is a thistle and a skunk.

DA shows up when I'm riding high on a wave of undeserved euphoria to remind me that my rent's due or that my life consists of sitting alone in the dark studying shit no one cares about in a shitty, Boo Radley house on the Mesa That Time Forgot. Or that giving a girl your phone number is not the same as receiving her phone number. Or that my writing skills are so terrible I have to resort to italics for emphasis. He can really ruin a mood.

I was thinking of what to drink with my frozen pizza I scratched together the other day, and he made an appearance. He always does this when I have impressed myself with amazing cooking. I thought to myself:

"I need some beer. Maybe I'll run get some before the stores close."

Why buy beer if you're going to sit and drink it alone?

"Because I wanted to be alone tonight."

Did you?

"Fucker."

You know, you could open that bottle of wine. The one covered in dust.

"I told you, I'm not going to open that just for my own consumption, it's a five year old reserve Syrah. I'm not wasting it on getting drunk and watching SNL. I'm just waiting for someone who deserves it to come by."

How long have you had it now?

"A...while. I still have faith that someone will deserve it."

Before it's vinegar?

"Sure. That takes years. And years. No more wine talk, please. I'm getting depressed."

OK. So, why the frozen pizza when you have that ditalini in the pantry gathering dust and the pancetta in the fridge waiting for the next power outage to make a fool of you?

"We've been through this before the ditalini and the pancetta are not for me. Besides, a bolognaise would go great with that Syrah. I'm saving them and that's final. "

Do you realize how unlikely it is you will ever have anyone over in this shitbox house who would even appreciate it? Or the cook?

"I think those likelihoods are on the rise. In fact, I think there just might be hope for it. See, you're going on some old intel, buddy."

Something I don't know about?

Morphology

The interaction between the mass populi and I has been altered. I walk into work and the men go out of their way to say hi. The women whisper, but are a little shy if I approach. A look of primal lust and titillating fear ripples over their calm facade. I have become some sort of god-man.

The change is subtle, but for someone who has a tendency to notice minute and unimportant details of all my human interaction, this new mysterious subethereal communication of status is a little disconcerting.

I stopped by the Ghetto Gas and Save on my way to work the other day. The section of town is known as Clifton and it is populated mostly by cars with tiny wheels and men in wife beaters and gaudy bling. The August heat was baking me in the cab of my old truck, I was flush and sweaty. I exited the truck and began the journey towards the door. I try to ignore people in Clifton. They, in turn, ignore me. I could feel eyes on me. I looked to my right to see several men of questionable moral nature leaning and sitting on an Impala. Their uniform white shirts and baggy shorts signaled that they were not of a type who would appreciate my company. I met their eyes. I had a feeling this could end badly. The loudest of the group returned the gaze and gave a slight nod. Not the polite society downward drop of the chin, but the pointing of the chin at some celestial body on the low horizon. I returned it. The others of the local posse of indigents mimicked the movement. Odd.

I walked in with my coffee cup and filled it full of black tar Sumatra. My skin still had the sheen of sweat, hilighting my sun-browned skin. Veins bulged tastefully from my forearms. I pondered my new Olympian limbs. I slapped the lid on my coffee and looked up at the mirrored display behind the tobacco. I didn't ever remember seeing those defined of shoulders hiding under my ears. I have always been stocky, but there was a lean quality, a mean quality. I noticed my plain T-shirt collapsing and bulging out where muscle tone seems to have excreted itself out of my pores. Under my chest was spare and desolate country where once a very minimal beer belly had resided. I have been working out, but not this hard. I scared myself. Even my two-day beard was intimidating as it outlined my square jaw and blocky cheekbones, somehow pulled tight like the cheapest chuck shoulder steak.

Confused, and a little arrogant, I walked up to the counter with my swirling oil to lubricate the skids of an ungodly shift. When I set it on the counter, the girl with the red vest and name tag looked up for the first time in our consumerist history together. She was openly staring. I greeted her as I do all counter help.

"How are you doing today, ma'am?"

My delivery startled her. In truth, it frightened me as well. She stepped back a millimeter or so, but her body leaned towards me. When did my voice acquire grit? It sounded like a cellist pedaling the C with his bow too heavily rosined. What was wrong with me?

She blushed, contrasting her nose ring against pale skin flaming in a state of fiery hemoglobular bliss.

She stuttered twice and then caught her breath.

"The Mountain Dew is behind you."

"No, just the special coffee, like always."

"You don't want Mountain Dew?"

No, never touch the stuff," I was positively rumbling, "I only drink water or coffee, really. As long as the coffee is good stuff and I'm not having a good wine or something."

"But...'do the DEW!', what about that?"

"Nope, I don't like the stuff."

"Red Bull?"

"No."

"Full Throttle?"

"No."

"A Jagerbomb?"

"Hate 'em."

"Well...", she was panting, "I guess just coffee then."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you very much."

How could gratitude sound sinister?

I paid and stepped away from the counter. She followed me with her bloodshot and unremarkable brown eyes. A young girl walked in the door, caught my eye and tripped. The loud teenage boys at the end of the magazine aisle who began to laugh and belittle went silent with a look from me.

I looked back at my reflection.

I saw it. The change. The animal ferocity of uncaged masculinity was channeled by my sheened scalp into my distinctively broken nose to be radiated out by heavy-browed eyes. I had messed up my normal No.2 to No.3 fade with my clippers, so I slapped on a No.1/2 and went to town. It would be ugly, but it would grow back in a couple weeks, I thought.

I never anticipated the change when a person's civilization is left in pile on the bathroom rug.

I walked as unassuming as I could to my truck. The girl in the Lexus was unabashedly gazing. The man in the VW was trying not to. I began fueling the ugly beast and folded my arms as I leaned against the door. I couldn't help but arch an eyebrow.

Marine Engineer, Savior of the Universe

There's something I've played around with for a while now. It's not really an actual project, it's just me having fun practicing writing in the first person. It's fun, really. I also started writing on this before I had any formal writing instruction (my one comp class counts as formal writing instruction in my world), so its rough. I used to have a little better inspiration living in a sunbaked alkaline sink called Lemoore. Luckily, I have escaped there for good, and this project suffered.

Anyway, this is not a promise that it will be updated with regularity, so comments over there may be ignored. The plot has no plan whatsoever, so don't bug me about it. In fact, don't even read it. No, don't even look at it. Just forget I said anything.

Billy Hodges.

First Commandment of Blogging:

Thou shalt give time for readers to comment and comment alike before adding a new entry.

Fuck that. See, I was sitting here puppy sitting, and came to a conclusion.

Before the conlusion reached en utero thoughto, a brief story.

Years ago, I was standing outside my little Government issued family house, the house absent of a family at this point, drunk as all get out. In this case, "all get out" must be defined as "hell." I am rural and use terms such as this when I try to make polysyllabic points. I also inheritted a baritone voice free of gravel, but towards the left hand of a piano's scale.

To continue:

I was not sober. I was pontificating, as I am wont to do in states of any "all get out", when I stretched the definition of death, hell, and the grave*. I remember beating on the hood of my Scout to drive home every fourth or fifth gerund as my strange haiku unfolded. I told of dancing demons and firy graves of innerspace galactic drama. I called down pyrological deluges from heaven and pummeled the disgusting draw of our humanity towards our fellow man as a photophyllic ameoba towards the pond-water sun. I decried the Whore, yet called also for empathy and a small touch of the calming ethylene-glycol of masculine reason and masculine acountability. Hell was not merely in my words. It was a real sulfur proceeding from my mouth to kiss and fondle my gathered friends at the temple of closing time. My rumbly voice, product of too much alcohol and too many preachers in the gene pool, wooed their senses into my state of being and made them agree with the hateful lies I tried not to believe.

My rant and rave and sermon was nearing its climax wherein I no longer cared whether the stupid children who rode out into the street may get run over or the dirty tramp thumbed her way across the West Coast for a blowjob and a bump of rock, when I noticed the wide eyes and slightly hypnotized stares of my compatriots, my brothers in arms. They held their beers at waist height, frightened at the world I weaved out of my phonetics. They believed everything I said. I saw whites of eyes making room for irises. I knew the look. They might as well have been sitting on a church pew listening to my father.

Thus, I shut up and threw my two-pint glass over my shoulder. My keen hearing, conditioned by a few too many years at the business end of super sonic death machines, heard it obliterate the cross-walk behind me. They snapped out of the stupor.

One of my best friends, a guy named Baron Peter Christian von Blah Blah Some Elitist Horseshit, looked at me as an alien creature. I was no longer his friend but a Sunni mystic, one hand pointed towards the mysteries above and one pointed below to the dirty soil of life as I spun our way to freedom.

"Dude, you should fucking write."

He had honesty, and frankly, good taste in literature.

My papist wop friend, Fabian, agreed with a solemn hush and a heartened nod.

The conclusion:

To answer a quick question I get asked with remarkable frequency, that is why I write. Maybe if my shared thought is nothing more than ones and zeroes, it won't be an hypnosis. Maybe it won't be a sermon.

Sermons scare me.



_{*This is a Pauline term I had hammered into me, "...triumph over death, hell and the grave." One of those letters to Corinth, I believe.}

I'm Fucking Crazy

I've been thinking about a girl. Actually, she's one of the letters. Her name means "beautiful."

In this life, it seems like all our little inconsistencies and hatreds build up into more than we are. She made me face the truth. We weren't made of the same ethereal bullshit as most others. Our selves were not little pretty things, or little ugly things, simply the product of worlds gone mad. There was no miracle to our destinies. We were just animals trapped in the vestiges of polite, sane humans. We were the darkness that makes up the majority of the universe.

She picked up, dated, and betrayed my best friend. A couple days later, I was in her bed. Honestly, the world was backwards and confusing when I knocked on her door by semi-Freudian accident. I bottle of Sailor Jerry and enough despondency will do that to a guy. Her liquid fingers in my beard and her words in my ear were salves on psychic contusions I don't think even she fully understood.

I had a dream about her last night. A confusing dream of apocalypse and famine. We had to run away and build a fortress. That part of the dream was vaguely frightening.

The rest of the dream was not frightening. In fact it was so unfrighteningly pleasant as to be none of your damn business.

Denton

Fairly recently, I went to a party and had the cookies and the chocolates, realizing not that the two were under no circumstances to be mixed. The cookies settled me into a philosophical and protracted state of turbocharged brain function. The chocolates made sweet, sweet love to my optical nerves and romantic, silky lust to some various other neurological processes. The most powerful image, with the exception of the pillow constructed Hebrew Gollum sitting next to me in the jungle chair, was when I was sitting on the porch watching the mellow flow of sodium light dying the universe mute orange.

Two people walked up to each other and out of their heads, a disc expanding in infinite distance, was a beautiful galaxy full of all the beauty of the cosmos. When they walked up to each other, the small girl in her red sweater and short skirt and the man in his baggy jeans and hoody, the galaxies overlapped. As they said their small hellos and shared a word or two, a new constellation burst into the overlapping discs. As they smiled and parted ways, the constellation split and followed the two galaxies away, bound in centerfield by the two neuropathway machines inside the heads of the two.

I stayed in my stupor of peace, feeling the need to connect to someone with touch and galaxy collision. I needed to see someone else's universe. I looked towards the living room and saw the object of some earlier inspiration. The chocolates made me perceive her in Platonic idea and pagan, pantheist bliss. Not short, not tall, flaming locks of auburn hair. I saw her in statuary and driftwood idols. With her smile, the universe decided to be a happy, golden place. She was to be respected and worshipped. I wanted to sit at the temple of her femininity so we could worship each other as celestial god-beings. We were after all, children of the dust of stars. Gods of small universes. The cookies made me lazy. I decided to sit on the porch a little longer.

Gradually, the reality I knew and repected returned. The green leaves were no longer the living testament to hydrology. The stars were just balls of gas far away. My friend, my good old friend, came out and sat next to me. We heard the repetitive, boring music of the stoned and saw the flashing blue and green of a light show designed to keep the mind from turning on itself in states of pharmos. My friend was over his chemicals as well. We sat in the cool breeze, smelled trash and something dead in the bushes, and looked at each other, no longer mystical machines, only biological miracles.

"God, I want to fuck the shit out of that chick."

"Fuckin' A, dude."

Rethinking

I've been considering, lately, my choice of vocation. I'm not making any changes to my major just yet, but I have trouble considering a whole mess of similarities I have with this ball of predominately slow moving silica and oxygen. While I understand that geology is a science preoccupied by the past, I sometimes wonder at its effectiveness in understanding myself and others, as is the goal of any science or art when the stuffy academics drop the pretense. So, here am I, rethinking life choices based on not much at all.

While men and women the world over find little parts of themselves in their jobs, great or small, I plan on going into a field that pretty much negates the worth of a person's miniscule time of inhabitation of the rock. While we have destroyed and repaired ecological left and right in the last few centuries, no man has ever fought terrus and won. Sure, there was some ingenious and frantic redirecting of lava flows in the last few decades, but even that is nothing more than dodging a half-assed eruption of slow, felsic lava.

When I lived in Hawaii, I saw a lava flow. As we sat and watched it encroach in small foot wide transgressions, the fauna that didn't burst into flames due to proximity of the silica melt was simply covered, forever and ever, by the impartial flow of new rock. Trees would stick out of the lava for awhile, a sick spectacle of melodramatic, teenage need to be accounted and acknowledged before the slow death of burning. The tree fought the crushing wait of the lava until its heat weakened stem buckled slowly, sinking into the red-hot mire. Not even the dignity of a quick snap or tragic holocaust was given to the pitiful pest in the way of the advance of the Earth.

See, life has been around for only a brief time, and even then, the massive variety of flora and fauna available to study at this point is even more recent. I think this lends it a gravitas in a way. The quick explosion against all odds and whatnot. Maybe I'm going into the wrong field.

I wonder if littoral biology should be my focus. Possessed of a voracious appetite and libidinous to a fault, I share primary motivations with many animalia available for study in warm, shallow water.

Getting wet and dirty in the compulsive search for good food and good copulation suits me.

Half There

The metal was hot enough.

A little red around the edges, but mostly white, the fire of saffron acetylene and cobalt oxygen reaking havoc on the poor Fe atoms. Beads of sweat rolled down my forearms and exploded sizzling in the white noise of thermal expansion. I had the tongs grasping it as I hooked a Vise-Grip jaw plier on to the 2X6 and clamped the strap to the board. I took a hammer and beat the iron around the perimeter of the wood and the small 2X3 stud. The metal was pliable and supple in my blackened hands. The strap wrapped around the board, cajoled into perfection by a combination of gentle engineering and brute force. I drove spikes through the holes I had blown through the iron with a torch into the douglas fir. Good. Not too much burn through. I was almost done with this timber leg. I doused the metal strap with cool water and winced away from the steam. The steel turned green, then blue, then finally the cold rainbow of temper as it shrunk in on itself and the wood, condensing them both into a stronger unit than either could be on it's own. A few more of these to go.

"...so, then the guy was like, telling me that his friend was dating this other girl the whole time I was out there, and I really should be upset, but I'm not, it was like, 'I don't care', you know?..."

A New York accent. Incredibly fast and very modulated. Girly. Very girly. Gilmore Girly. Electronically filtered. Piezo distorion of some kind. It fell from the burning blue sky on to my bare, sweaty shoulders.

"...I mean, come on, right? I guess they were in counselling and the relationship was on the rocks and everything, but its still kind of screwed up. So I said...Oh wait, you went to sleep..."

"No, I didn't. Well, not really. I was dreaming, but I still heard you. I was building a forge."

Fuzzy house. I'm laying on the recliner with a phone buried in my ear.

"What?"

"I was building a forge. It was a nice one."

"See, this is why I love talking to you."

I whine, "Now I want a forge."

Critical Thinking

I spent a good portion of Saturday sitting on a cliff, staring into the past. I don't mean this in some weird, melodramatic way. This was no Dark Night of My Soul, it was just a restful break from the grinding activity of employment and civilization. I wasn't looking into my past. My past is insignificant in comparison to what I was seeing.

I was sitting on top of a formation known as Grand Mesa Basalt. Named with the whimsy geologists are loathed for, it sits predictably on top of the Grand Mesa. Basalt is volcanic rock. The Grand Mesa which towers over the Grand Valley in regal snooty contempt, is formed, as most Mesas are, by a cap of erosion resistant material sitting on top of softer, more mutable material. The Grand Mesa is very young. The cap is around ten million years old in mythos du jour. Under the cap, the largest formation is Cretaceous Wasatch.

I sat on the edge of the cap, a cliff section of the western bout appropriately called Land's End. The shale formation know as Mancos formed the low point of my vista, almost seven thousand feet below me, but only twenty miles away. The Mancos formation is the mud bottom of a littoral sea that stretched from Northern California down to Mexico City about 90 million years ago.

To the West of my show was the massive cliffs of two different deserts, millions of years apart. The Jurassic had seen the formation of a brilliant red sand desert with dunes reaching three hundred feet in this area, which a few million years later would be covered by a river much like the Mississippi. Under the blood-red Triassic Chinle, the dark stain of precambria pushed up out of the ground, exploding to the surface hinting at the great forces grinding away in the Lithosphere. This section of rock was 1.7 billion years old.

From my perch, I could see from the very recent history of upright walkers, through the flowering plants, Down through the ages of Mastodon, Stegosaurus, strange amphibia, protozoa, and finally to the very origins of life. It was stretched out like a scroll with tick marks millions of times the span of my years.

My friend engaged me in conversation. As I usually do, I engage in incredibly small talk when I'm thinking massive thoughts. I mentioned camping out on this rim in my old 1975 International Harvester Scout. He looked at me funny. Not at the waterfall right next to me or the towering cliffs, ten million years old. The far Uncompahgre with its claim to age in the billions did not raise a pulse of thought on his brain. He commented flippantly, "Man, that Scout that was a long, long time ago, dude."

"Yeah, six whole years," I laughed, "Dude."

Re:

Part of the fun of knowing me is random inebriated emails. Most of the time, I forget what I said until I get the reply. This one made me laugh, so I thought I would share it. This was an email to a friend I've kept around off and on for a few years. She's occasionally cool. Sometimes, I enjoy her company. She sort of means something to me every so often. In a platonic sort of way, of course.

Hi. You whined one time about a lack of emails I send you. I felt terrible and it kept me up for weeks. In fact, only recently have I quit crying.

A pleasantly grouchy woman acosted me today as I was placing heavy things in a high place and said, "So, are you the person...", she put great emphasis on that word, "...who has been working electrical?"

I replied, "Sometimes. I do when Patty doesn't or can't because of her fear of heights. Acrophobia is the dreadest of fears, for just the other day I was pontificating..."

She had none of it. She kicked my ladder and hissed, "Well, that explains it. I find cartons misplaced and displaced every morning, thrown at random into coves and hollers for which they are not designed."

"I find that amazing and amusing, Creature," I said to the hissing, vile menace, "for I, and most of my fellow night workers, have complained on numerous occasion of the disheveled condition which we inherit every day from your fellow day workers. Perhaps the real villian lies outside the coziness of our own Orange camp."

She ripped out a shelving unit with her dripping mandibles. Crushing it for effect, she intoned, "Thus will I do to the workers of the night, evil with laziness who destroy my order!"

I leapt from the ladder to the ground and pulled out Fayre Laurelle, my trusty safety-designed utility knife, from it's enchanted scabbard (latin for scabbard is vagina.) She blew fire from between the seeping nostrils atop her head which I blocked with my enchanted orange apron. I thrust the knife into her loins and with great cry did she begin to melt. I shouted thus:

"Can you not see, foul creature?! Forsooth, our lives are beset by only two truths: that energy is conserved and converted in all systems and that entropy is undeniably present in all systemic procedures! Anon, we fighteth the tides of physics so! Your organisation of your feif will fail, and that miserably, without constant attention from your minions and my people. Why do you insist upon being such a contankeruous bitch? Were it not for the disintegration of all man's puny plans, what job would we have? I shine the light of reason upon you!"

I made the symbol of entropy on her forehead. She immediately turned into Natalie Portman. We rubbed parts and she bore me twin boys who will one day rule the People's Republic of Colorado with justice and mercy. Their names are Jamis the Bold and Ford the Steadfast.

Thus did we live happily ever after.

Bitch.

The People Examiner For US!

Lately, I have had to read magazines. No one is forcing me, but on my breaks at work, I have the choice of smoking, court TV or magazines.

You know what? National Geographic, hell yeah. Smithsonian, absolutely. Outside, sure. Men's Health, um...Sort of. There's way too many half dressed guys in that magazine. No, I have a magazine that is either titled "Us", as in a group of you and me, or "US", as in United States. I haven't been able to figure it out, it has nothing to do with either me and you or the country at large. There is a magazine called "People" in which they focus not on the populace, but on a small set of persons to a very obscene extent. A publication by the name of "Examiner" worried me until I found that it did not deal whatsoever with any matters of a gynecological or liturgical nature.

It inspired me. There is so much news out there that I had no idea about. I spent most of a decade outside the loop on day to day American and world gossip that didn't pertain to incendiary devices and mass conflag. That being said, someone went to the trouble to print this crap. It must be important to have made such a huge dent in the ink production of this country and several third world dictatorships, but how many other people are ignorant of all these important events? Surely anyone who avoids the use of smileys. They should not be in the dark, as I was. So, I have a new addition to this site:

The People Examiner for Us

All the real news!

Watch out for the next SoCal non-potable water shortage since it looks like the women of Hollywood have been drinking ho's water for the last couple years I been away. The chick with that one song that used to be popular was seen making out with Jared Leto at some bar or some shit like that. The stupid blonde chick, you know? Married to the Backstreet Boy? She was Daisy Duke in the last piece of rednexploitation. Yeah, she hit it off with the guy. DWTF? He had his paws all over Jennifer Connelly in Requiem for a Dream and he goes for some peroxide bimbo? Standards are lost on this guy. About five years ago I saw his band, 30 Seconds to Mars play in Virginia Beach. They sucked.

Speaking of ignorant backwoods Americans, obesity is blowin' up the spot! A lot of famous people are getting fat. Some moron followed them around long enough to get a picture of them showing some very average bellies in unflattering light, now they are on the cover of magazines. Fame is so fickle! Also A lot of famous people are dangerously thin! Usually the ones who were fat two months ago. If they had LA eating habits in Wisconsin Cows, no one could have any good cheese.

Speaking of melodramatic bovinous creatures with eating disorders, Britney Fucking Spears. DWTF??!! Something went very, very wrong there. A trailer park is rolling over in a tornado right now seeing the way she's been acting. Just like most people from Arkansas, she doesn't realize she has gotten fat! She did an interview with a guy who looked like a reporter and the photo from the session clearly shows bat flaps under her glutinous triceps. One good thing to come from her manteca career was her first single, Hit Me Again and Put Some Stank On It, Bubba Joe. I think that's what it was called anyway. Something about hitting her back when she was sixteen in any case. The song was terrible, but it launched the career of bassist Andy Hess, eventual replacement for Allen Woody of Gov't Mule.

Speaking of people who should procreate:

Angelina Jolie had a freakin' baby! What the hell? I didn't know she was pregnant! The dad is the dude from Fight Club, and apparently, he's been tapping that ass for a while, now. Also, Angelina must be a total skank because she already has four kids and NONE OF THEM LOOK ALIKE! Not a one. Shit, they don't even look like they belong to the same ethnic backgrounds. My advice, keep your legs shut for longer than it takes to pull 'em out of the stirrups at the maternity ward!

Speaking of skanks popping out kids, Tom Cruise knocked up a twelve year old runaway. Her name is Katie something and she must be famous because everyone else knows who the hell she is. I'll meticulously research this for a future update. Stay Tuned!!!

Oh yeah, the singer's name is Jessica Simpson. The chick from The Dukes OF Hazzard married to the gay singer? And holy fuck, she's got a sister! Her sister actually looks a little more sultry, less like a Jack Russell Terrier, and she's the one who fucked up on SNL. Yeah, that girl, the one who forgot how to lip synch, and Jessica are related. Who knew?

Not me, and not you. Until now!

See you next week!

UPDATE!!!

The rest of the world is very happy this week. The US Soccer Team lost the Football World Series. Apparently, there was a group of shepherds from some obscure country in Africa that handed asses to Our Guys. In their defense, they were a soccer team and it was not fair to trick them into a football game. They probably didn't even have the right pads or cleats. The official statement from the US has been, "We have a soccer team? Well, we may have lost a game for skinny guys and wusses, but we were too busy being heavily armed and easy to offend. Keep laughing, Uganda."

iFAQ

Yes, infrequently asked questions. I have had some form of internet presence now for a year and a half or so, and here are some of the more interesting questions from all my creative time wasting pursuits. These are actual questions I have received in relation to my sites. Obviously, a couple of these questions are not from this site. Some are kind of dumb, and therefore funny:


do you totally hate_____?

Probably not anymore than I hate anyone who isn't a hot marine biologist or writer. A hot poetress marine biologist. With a Sratocaster, wait, Thinline Telecaster. Hmmm. What was the question?

So, how do I start my truck with a screwdriver?

First of all, this is either referred to as jumping or gap-starting. Make sure the truck is not in gear. Make sure the truck is not in gear. Finally, make sure the truck IS NOT IN GEAR.

Next, take a wire and jam it into the positive battery terminal so that it will stay put and run that wire to the positive post of your coil, you can find your coil by following the center wire from your distributor to its source. Be careful not to make an arc your fingers between the post and your coil's ground. It hurts very bad. Once the connection is solid, find your starter solenoid. If you don't know what that is, you should question whether you need to be doing any of this at all. On one side of your solenoid will be your positive battery cable, on the other your starter cable. Arc those two. I use a crescent wrench and a screwdriver. The motor will start.

This is good to know how to do in case your ignition system takes a shit on you. That means your stranded and being stranded is for pussies.

Are you drunk all the time?

Um, no. Believe it or not, I hold down a job and function almost normally, most of the time.

UR hot, R U going to Whiskey River this weekend?

Yeah, make sure you wait around for me. You sound super cool.

You gun loving redneck nazi

Right, because the first thing the Nazis didn't do was disarm all their genocide fodder. Right? I mean if you're going to accuse someone of something you have to at least have some semblance of knowledge of the subject, right?

Dude, did you totally fuck (insert random woman's name here)?

It would be pretty ungentlemanly for me to tell you if I did.

What is your myspace page?

I sigh loudly at your insolence. MySpace is a place for friends. Friends have let me pass out on their couch. You have not. If you are hot and female, feel free to persuade me.

dude, george bush is such a fucking tool

He might be. I don't know the guy, but I know he made me spend valuable years of my life killing people I didn't hate. In his defense, he isn't any worse than anyone megalomanic enough to want the Presidency.

America is fucked up, asshole!

Yes.

America totally fucking rocks, asshole!

Yes.

Oregon/Minnesota/Illinois/Utah/California has geology, too, asshole.

Technically, yes. Spiritually, maybe.

Are you looking for vi@gra?

No. I have mineralogy and mountain biking.

Have you considered writing erotica?

Have you ever read my stuff on geology? Shit, I wrote a small entry on tertiary river gravel deposits that caused my hard drive to burst into flames and four women jogging by to get pregnant and give birth to quartzite, gabbro, selenite, and some type of plutonic igneous that can fuel the space shuttle for six years.

It involved the undulating river lapping back and forth over the supple Mancos shale formation, leaving little evidences. Pulsing, writhing through the receptive sand, dendritic fingers of hydrological influence coursing over the burning skin of the valley...

Actually, I probably could write erotica, since the bar is very, very low, and the attraction and interaction of two people follow the same physical laws than awe me in all aspects of the universe. That being said, erotica, for me, is very inspired, individual actions between a man and a woman on a commission basis.

If you are an erotically inspiring woman, feel free to commission me. You must like old trucks.

I'm still hung up on the marine biologist.

RU looking for H0T women in your area!!?

Well, yes. Funny, though, I bet your shitty personals don't list a marine biologist at all, the pinnacle of hot and sexy. I saw this PBS special the other day. Wet suited smart woman who can swim for hours, I mean come on, it isn't even fair. Fuck.

Friends.

Heaven reminds me of a country club in Virginia. Not to say that the greens or fairways are associated with heaven, I have never in my life stepped onto a golf course that charged admission. It seems that heaven itself is formed on exclusion. There is not a heaven if they let just loddy-doddy every-goddamn-body in to partake in everlasting paradise. Believing in heaven precludes any non-existence of hell. Heaven is the most exclusive of clubs, formed by the most exclusive of judges.

My one and only experience with a blue-blood country club came at the expense of a girl near and dear to me. I slaved semi-patriotically in the most blue collar of jobs, ensuring that another blue collar semi-patriotic slave waving a different flag, would die alone and without fanfare in a desert country somewhere, spectacularly minced by my handiwork. My girlfriend worked for a mortgage company. Only the most brutish of the proletariat took a job in my field, supporting and defending the right of rich men to sleep well knowing their sons were safe in college. The sons of men who ran mortgage companies.

As luck would have it, the company had a Christmas party at an extremely exclusive country club. My girlfriend was invited along with a guest. I fancied myself up in high order with a hand tailored suit from Singapore, a blue Egyptian cotton shirt tailored in Dubai and a plain black Navy issued tie which perfectly matched my plain black Navy issued shoes. There is no way to make a military fade look classy.

My luck continued to spiral out of control, eventually landing me seated at the table of the president of this quaint little mortgage company. The yuppies talked of plays and concerts. I talked of arming times and glove vanes. They were impressed, as I am impressed by a dog that can fetch me beer. One of them brought up a play I'm told is famous. It is called Les Miserables. I scratched my close-shorn head and shifted in the plush seats, I had seen this play. I had seen it in Bahrain. With a Russian whore. Drunk.

"Oh, I've seen that."

"Did you like it?"

"I don't know, I was too drunk to remember it and my buddies got us kicked out."

"Oh my goodness."

By the end of the night, I had dropped the Martinis and went into the club's stash of Wild Turkey. The old man who had boot-strapped his business up out of the mire in his younger, wilder days liked me. He also liked Wild Turkey. We became well drunk. Our women were not pleased. Neither were the rest of the guests. My girlfriend was so angry at my foolishness she married me in a thoroughly malicious manner.

The point being, I got well drunk last night and came home to spend some quality time with an old friend. The first time we met, he called me by Tom Joad. Last time I spent time with him, he called me Adam Trask, and he was correct. This time, he called me Tom Hamilton and was even more startlingly astute.

The problem is, as I understand heaven, my buddy John and I will never meet in the hereafter, which is sad because he died twelve years before I was born. We could have been great friends. His insight into me over the years is uncanny. Unfortunately, he didn't belong to the exclusive club I was born into. Poor guy.

"Thank you son for wanting to honor me with the truth. It is not as pleasant, but it is more permanent."--Samuel Hamilton to his son.

It seems like the struggle to get into heaven, that morality itself, is a struggle against natural human entropy. To be moral, a person must slave patriotically against nature in one long continuous battle of will. Obviously, there will be exclusion to the reward.

Entropy long ago swallered me whole. I don't quite revel in it, but it revels in me. Interesting thought to have at five in the morning sobering up. It made me think of bears stealing beer and a black Ford Galaxie driving a marine engineer and Luke Skywalker around. My all consuming funk may be lifting because I now know myself better. I'm not Tom Hamilton all the time, but I have been lately. And the dark side of Tom is a character named Billy.

Billy reluctantly saves the universe, you see. Maybe he's ready to fight again. He might need an assist from a poorly spelled suburbanite who sometimes deludes himself into becoming a deer.

Me and my friends may form an exclusive group in the hereafter, yet. I think Sam Clemens will be allowed in as well.

See you there, fuckers.

Potty-mouthing

Today I offended someone. I accidently called him a bad word. I called him a measure of kindling in Victorian vernacular. Turns out, some relation of his was not a fan of women as erogenous targets of life-inclusion. This made me feel bad.

I've been trying lately to think of stories from the Navy to impart to a reading audience. There aren't many to tell. Not because the time was not interesting or because it was void of powerful moments of inspired humanity, but because no one would get it.

Most of the readership of polite internet land would be turned off about the fifth time a quoted phrase started with an "F" and ended with "ucking, cocksucking, one-way, faggot-ass, no-cigarette-sharing bitch", then people might look elsewhere for work-friendly entertainment.

Which is too bad, you punk-ass bitches have no idea what the fuck you're missing being such little

PreterNothing 1.2

This a serialized account. Read this first, or this will just sound crazy. Crazier, anyway.

My mind had retreated almost completely from the fabric of consensus reality. Nothing that I saw was fake. Nothing I felt was false. The one shining, glaring conspirator of the Darkness squeezing in my brain and sucking out my reason was the Visitor.

The Visitor formed from the malevolent void flowing from inside my head. The void became so dark and so dense under my east window that it could have formed nothing else. The window warped around the dark image. Darker than the night, blacker than the sackcloth air.

She became real.

When our bodies are slipping into sleep, strong and rapid from the boat launch of the things we expect to see into the seething river of unconscious, the first act of unwill is the paralysis. To keep you from acting out your day all over again with violent or dangerous consequence, the body shuts off your limbs. If you remain lucid, if not conscious, you feel tied down to your bed. Or as if something is sitting on your chest.

She brought with her a foreboding. She didn't just carry it. She was formed in the furnaces of the hell that are fueled by the small guilts and sulfurous lies we wish we are afraid not to tell. Foreboding was her. All the fear and hate in the world was brought to my room. Though formed of fear and hate, she was not afraid or hateful. The same as my blood is not iron and oxygen.

She had love. Love like I have feared and felt small twinges of. Mad, mad, murderous love, the love of a mother to her leprous child. The love of a lioness as she kills her own offspring to control the consumption of food. The love of a betrayed lover. Love is a many splendored thing, indeed. And it has bloodied the whole world.

My world was awash in black, festered blood. It ran from the hems of her tattered, midnight cape. The cape rose abover her head and covered it totally, shadowing her face in another shade of the same festering black. Her tall form, sucking in all around her, radiated insanity. As surely as she was formed with quarks of fear and hate and love, insanity was the fermion of the whole. Embittered maternity stood her apart from the reality of my room.

She walked towards me with measured gait. I tried with effort rarely mustered to tell my eyes to turn to her. I'm not sure if it was the paralysis or the fear that held me at bay. She moved closer. She loved me. I could tell.

I knew a woman once who was told her whole life she could not bare children. She was a stunning example for all femininity, but she could not close the deal with Eve. Her and her husband formed a lasting and true relationship in their little home in the country, in the shade of the largest oak in the county. They formed a Garden of Eden without knowledge of a Fall.

One day, after fourteen years of medical belief to the contrary, she conceived. The small microsm of The Brethren lit up in joyous celebration for the miracle, the goodness of God. Her nest found new purpose as a room was prepared for the honored guest and a tree house was put up in the old oak. Around term, she had the child. A dark, inhuman, malformed lump of lifeless flesh. The single child she dared not hope for was a dead monster. The Brethren offered plattitudes and privacy to the destroyed woman, it was all they could do. She gave birth to dead love. Her womb was cursed by God, as was God by her, but never out loud.

In the autumn months that followed, she adopted the manner and meter of an ever-expectant mother, tittering about her house, busy and insane. Madness crept into her once and still beautiful eyes like algae on a pond. Her love killed her. The husband found her hanging from the oak tree.

Madness, in her dull, flowing cape, little red riding hood from Hell, paced towards me deliberately.

She loved me, I could tell.

another snippet

Comment moderation? What does that even mean?

Why do you even bother? They all see through you, poseur.

Wait, I think it has something to do with the lack of comments.

No, that's because nobody loves you, everyone hates you, you might as well eat worms and die.

Can I doctor up the worms in a chili or soup or something?

No, straight worms.

I think I can fix it, now...I need Bloggers help.

:)Hi I'm Blogger!

Cool, fix my shit.

:)Hi I'm Blogger!

What the hell?

:)Hi...

Yes?

:)H-h-hi...I Blgoer .);

Right...I need to....

:]Blogre

What a moron.

Yeah.

:)I'm Sorry Blogger is having difficulties. An engineer has been notified.

Are you kidding me?

:)Hi, I'm Blogger

A brief snippet

Are you drunk?

Um, yeah, but I can explain.

It's eight in the morning.

That is correct. I, however, just got off work a little while ago. This is my evening drinking.

Even so, it's only Tuesday..um, Monday I mean. For you, anyway. It's Monday, right?

So judgemental with nary a glimpse into my life to assume your moral superiority.

It's sort of my job, asshole.

It is? Who put you in charge of this boat?

Technically, I am an imalgam of your parents, society, various authority figures, Petty Officer Swain, AO1 Parker, etc.

Amalgam, you mean. Kind of an odd genesis for an asshole like yourself, don't you think?

Well, I am your conscience, I have my work to do and so do you.

I know, but fuck it, I'm lazy. Besides, I have creative pursuits to deal with.

Like a stupid Flickr badge?

It is not stupid. OK, it's pretty stupid. I remember now why I hate blogs. I now have one. Shit. I can't stop myself and I'm terrible at it.

Honestly, you probably have few good reasons to think that. Readership has a lot more to do with whether or not you are an attractive female than anything else.

Is a conscience supposed to say things like that?

Oh, come one, read this girl's shit for instance. Trite, boring, sophmoric. 38 comments. How is it different from Anaglyph's or any other dude's blog?

Uh, it sucks?

Right. Do you see what makes a good blogger now?

Smileys and LOL variants? Mispellings and boring, geocentrist material?

You forgot over-use of elipses. No, cute snapshots of a girl. I don't know why I bother with you. ROTFLOL ;D

Ha. I wonder, does that mean people are actually rolling around on the floor laughing an ass off and whatnot? I'm just saying it all seems hyperbolous and you know how I, we, hate that shit. Want some wine? I heard that makes me easier to deal with. ^_^

Nice. Give me some of that shit. Woah, that's nasty. Yeesh, what the hell is this shit? Goddamn.

California Delicious Red. It's more pinkish and definitely not delicious. I'm just glad they didn't throw some snob-barrio Spanish in there and call it "Vino Colorado".

Pinkish wine. Ha, I hate Californians. You got any Wild Turkey?

California hating and bourbon? Wrong website, buddy.

Shapely, Well-Oiled Shiva

As much as I try to make myself sound single, I do have a steady girlfriend in addition to my increasingly one-sided relationships to a couple old trucks. She's more of a wife. In fact, she's the only girl I've let spend the night in my bed in years. She used to lay next to me in my little coffin shaped rack in the bowels of the USS Connstellation. More than a time or two, she's seen her share of my tears and my drunken pawing.

We hooked up back in 1999 when she was brand new to the world. I decided that her name should be Monica, after a woman with whom many a trait is shared. Curvy, dark, sultry, Rosewood. It just made sense to me. I found good reason to keep this moniker to myself. For one, I always found men naming objects after women and women after objects to be a little creepy.

Monica defied any non-specific name. I could call her "the maroon one", but it would just seem like she's one of many in a collection and would never capture the deep port complexion. I could call her "the Fat Strat," but it has the same effect. My only option would have been to give her so much detail in her name, a littany of features, I would sound not like a lover of her, just a collector, a breed that will never show true love for their subjects, be it postage stamps or trophy wives.

The second reason I felt it necessary to keep her name to myself was the simple fact that my brother's girlfriend became his wife. She shared the beautiful three syllables with my girl. In my family, the name Monica became synonymous with my dark, rosewood sister-in-law. I don't think my brother would have liked knowing I had my dirty, concrete stained fingers running all over Monica. And it raised some fairly conflicting feelings in me towards the two Monicas.

Now, she just sits, often neglected, with her name being a secret silence between the two of us. Probably the way it should be. She's still pretty damn hot.