Chile Coloradical

Yesterday my neighbor and I rode our bikes into work. It was cute. I've never done that with anyone before. I did kind of miss my me time and my iPod, but it couldn't hurt to get comfortable around other people. I have to admit that I was a little concerned when she left my office yesterday morning. Honestly, the bike that I was letting her ride was as advanced as a fixed gear with freewheel and handbrakes can get. I was waiting for a call all day from her describing some horrific, face ensnarling bike wreck that was going to be due to my shoddy bike repair skills.

Anyway, I headed home from work and got home with saddlebags under my arms from a proliferation of perspiration. I don't sweat. Things have to be pretty extreme to get me visibly sweaty. Got home and donned a wifebeater and continued working on my patio for a bit when my ex-neighbor's kid came by and asked some question of me that really didn't have an answer so I made one up. He then went and knocked on the new neighbor's door. She answered after a little bit and he let her know that if she needed help moving anything that him and his friend would help. It was actually supercute, but nothing worth waking up from a nap for.

She came over to my patio and we talked for a bit and she went back to her place as I went to soak and drink beers by the pool. I bumped into another neighbor that is kind of a trip. He rocks a Speedo and is super tan and has his nipples pierced and turns fifty in a couple of months. We always get talking about philosophy and quantum mechanics. Yesterday was Taoism and whether science will ever advance to a point that would lead into religious values completing a belief system based in logic and faith. The more we drink, the more interesting it gets. So, we have a few beers and are just talking and hanging out and he goes "Well, I met this chick on, uh..." and then he paused and I jumped in with "On match.com or something?" and he replied back, "No. It was singlenudist.com or adultfriendfinder." The dude's advanced in the online dating department for sure. I had to look up singlenudist.com today because I didn't really believe that it existed.

So, it started to get dark and he came by a little later and we just sat and smoked cigarettes, watched a little Bill Hicks, and had a few more beers. It was getting ridiculous for a Monday night. Anyway, the new neighbor came out on her way to our "State-of-the-art" apartment complex gym. I'll admit, as he pointed out later, that I got giddy when she came out. It was the booze, but regardless, the conversation turned to the neighbor after she had left. I told him that it was strictly off limits and to not speak another word of it. He just looked back at me and said "Bullshit. You've got a new toy."

She came back later and we ended up getting burritos after a conversation that went like this:

"Are you guys still open?"

"No. We close at 10:00"

"Dude. It's 9:55"

"Yeah, but we can't make anyone dinner in five minutes."

"Dude, remember that loco guy named Hugh from last Saturday in the bar being totally loud and obnoxious? This is him. Can I just get two Chile Coloradical burritos and one chile verde burrito to go."

"Oh. It's you? No problem. You love Vicente Fernandez and Lionel Richie, senor. They'll be ready in ten minutes."

"Thanks. Vicente Fernandez es mejor cantador del Sudamerica y Mexico. Duh."

So, the neighbor? Really tempting, but it would be one of the stupider things one could do. So, plan on keeping it all above the covers and it's just really cool that, so far, I've been lucky in the neighbor lottery this time. We're supposed to be biking to a Steely Dan tribute band in the park tonight, but I'm secretly hoping she flakes so that I can be breezy. Now if only something could happen with the creepy neighbor. I know that one shouldn't wish that on anyone, but it sure would make things a little cooler.

Oh and did I just listen to "This Is It" by Kenny Loggins three times on my iPod? WTF?!?!?!

Normalcy. Normal Do.

The weekend. I had therapy last Thursday and we actually changed the schedule to every other week because things have been going well and we were actually struggling to find new things to talk about. It's really cool. My ex-wife texted me in the middle of the session. It was perfect. Feeling normal or at least similar to everyone else.

I played soccer Friday night and even skipped postgame beers in lieu of going home and relaxing with ice around my ankle for ten minutes every hour. I had a couple beers by myself or at least only with Tiger Woods on xbox. Never drink alone. I went to bed relatively early for a Friday night and slept in as late as I could which is now about 7:45. Hit my routine schedule and went and got coffee at Philz and did a crossword before going to my last DUI appointment ever.

I got to the appointment and dude started sweating me by saying that he couldn't find my file. I've never missed a class for over 9 months and they can't find my file? Honestly, the whole program is an administrative nightmare, but is over. He handed me a bunch of paperwork and talked about what a shitty day he was having and how his pension sucks. I got out of there in six minutes and was done. Paperwork should clear in a week and I'm back to normal after the whole harrowing affair. I learned so much from the experience and ultimately it's proved to be incredibly positive. I'll actually miss it a little bit.

I left the appointment and drove to the music store to buy a capo. I've never owned one, but need it to play The Decemberists and Josh Ritter accurately. Plus, only ballers have a capo stuck on the neck of their acoustics. When I got to the music store, I put a toe in the water and went and looked at some of the used stuff. There was a strat that spoke to me a little, but it was only a whisper. It was no reason to tie myself to the mast. My ship was safe from the rocks.

I went to the companion store with all the new gear and looked at some strats for a bit. I saw one for $650 and took it on a test drive. The neck felt like hot butter. It was brilliant like wooden Xanax. As I was playing it, though, I caught an Ibanez RG350 out of the corner of my eye. It's a way cheaper version of one of my first guitars ever that got stolen. I got nostalgic and asked one of the dudes who works there to grab it for me. He handed me a cord and a pick and sent me to the gear room. It took ten minutes of playing for me to walk out and ask, "Does it come with a case?"

He went to go ring it up and gave me a soft case for cheap. I almost forgot the fuckin' capo I was so excited. He threw in some complimentary strings and I also grabbed a stand for my Guitar Hero controller. I felt just straight fuckin' giddy driving home. I suppose it's what it would feel like coming home from the hospital with a newborn. Or, at least my equivalent.

Got it in the apartment and tuned for 45 minutes as the gitbox got acclimated to my apartment. Dual locking tremolos are a pain in the ass, but they have whammy bars for the rock. Played it for a bit and then put it on its stand next to my other two guitars and caught myself just staring at it from time to time.

A side effect of the whole experience is that I think I've talked my neighbor into buying his a kid a Chinese B.C. Rich Warlock for his kid's tenth birthday. It was my first guitar and I know that it will inspire the kid to play forever. It looks badass enough that a kid will just want to rock it. So, it's on. Lil Trav is getting a Warlock for his birthday. Sick. Of course, it comes with me obligated to give him lessons, but that will be good for me.

So, the neighbor came by to check out the new ax and a girl walked out of the apartment that he had just moved out of. On top of that, she was cute. He started up a conversation with her and we all exchanged introductions and gave her a few tips for checking out San Francisco for the day and also about the weird neighbor.

I hung out and owned Tiger Woods and played guitar for the day completely spacing on eating. The neighbor came back over that evening and I set up his kid on Rock Band. Over the span of a half hour I decided I had to eat and told him he was in charge of my castle and I was going to jam to a Mexican restaurant for margaritas and a kick ass Chile Colorado burrito. He asked if he could go and I told him, "Shit yeah you can, but you're not paying." He always pays.

We grabbed our Lolitish fifteen year old neighbor and I set her up on my wireless to babysit in my apartment and bailed. We got there and the HughVoltage show immediately went into effect. $10 in the jukebox to play Vicente Fernandez and Lionel Richie with one MJ tribute of "PYT." Within ten minutes we had met everyone in the tiny bar and were hanging out. There was a pregnant lady drinking margaritas and it went like this:

"You're pregnant? What the hell are you doing drinking?"

"They're virgins."

"Hey, I bet you aren't."

So, we ate and drank and were merry and my neighbor was going to take off. At the same time a couple of girls who wore bigger jeans than I would were leaving, too. They asked if I'd like to go to a bar with them and I thought "What the hell" and got into a stranger's car. One of them smoked weed in the back seat and they took me to their friend's house. That was awkward. We got to the bar and I bought them a round and realized I was done. One of them ordered an Adios Motherfucker and it totally put a shot across my bow. If you see a blue drink, you should leave the vicinity immediately. Pro tip.

I snuck out and grabbed a cab and went home as I had a pending breakfast date with my mom the next morning.

The next morning I woke up and heard nothing from my mom. She pinged me at 11:30 AM and said she would try to get to my place by 4:00. I simply told her that that was a late breakfast and bailed to Der Wienerschnitzel to satisfy a dersgusting urge. It was derlicious and gave me derarrhea. Gross.

My new neighbor had mentioned that she worked at the same place that I did and I had offered her my backup bike because parking is a joke. This meant I had to put it back together and it became my Sunday afternoon project. The back tire was a little messed up so I rode it to the bike store to use their tools and got it rocking by the time I left. It's a beast and it's awesome, but a little intermediate for riding. On the way home I grabbed the Sunday paper and a FroYo. It was turning into a perfect Sunday.

Anyway, I got the bike all set up and went out with my mom. We had a really good talk. The therapy is contagious and she talked about the scarlet letter that we both wore when I was growing up because she was a 16 year old mom. We have a lot of the same things going on because of it. It was really cool. There is a lot of opening up going on. A lot.

I got home and was chillin' from a really productive weekend, I felt. My new neighbor knocked on my door and was holding two beers and came inside to hang out. We moved to the porch and she smoked flavored cigarettes while we kicked it. We ended up biking to work together this morning. Trust me. It was way too cute for my tastes and my comfort zones.

Threebird

Two nights ago I was coming off a night of no sleep and heading to bed at 8:15. It was still light out. The night before, I had gone to bed and woke up every hour on the hour with my favorite waking up being at 2:34. Numbers are fun. I was having super vivid dreams that kept waking me up and it was like a hundred degrees and didn't cool down until around 4:00 AM. I only know this because I was laying awake in bed and noticed that the temperature was more tolerable.

So, the next night, I'm exhausted and inching up to that pre-bed smoke. My neighbor knocks on my sliding glass door as I'm laying on my couch semi-lucid and points excitedly towards his apartment and is saying something that I can't hear through the glass. A couple minutes go by and he walks by with this chick towards the pool. Okay, he wanted me to see that he was with some chick. Good for him.

About a half hour later, I'm indulging that smoke I mentioned before and they are walking back from the pool laughing and holding hands. Holding hands the first time hanging out is something I'll never understand. Perhaps I should. That could have been my bad with the physical therapist. We had an invisible shield between our personal spaces that, in retrospect, may have been emanating from me.

They walk towards me and he says as he giggles, "Hey, show my buddy."

I look up and she pulls her towel back and pulls her bikini down to show me her giant fake boobs. I acknowledge and look back down politely saying "Thanks." Ten minutes later it sounds like a raping at a petting zoo in his apartment and I headed to bed.

The following day I got home from work and was purposefully avoiding going outside to avoid the play-by-play. It's always kind of gross to hear about that stuff coming from him. Avoidance never works.

Around 8:00 PM last night I decided to pick up the gitbox and practice for a little bit. It was hot as hell so I had my screen door open. My neighbor walks through my screen door into my apartment and says "Hey man, does this look okay for a job interview tomorrow?"

I reply in my head, "Yeah, if it's at Tommy Bahama," but actually say out loud to him, "Sure, but I would add a belt, tie and socks."

He then asks, "Hey, can I borrow a brown belt, brown socks, a tie and a sport coat?"

"Dude, Macy's is having a sale you should just go pick up some gear. Plus, my sport coat would require a time machine to look fashionable. It's gross and from JC Penney in like 1995." I answer back. Trying to mask my sarcasm.

He then says, "Dude. Target is always having a sale and I have a credit card there."

"Then I would do that," I say.

He leaves and I go back to my scales. I'm rusty.

Moments later he comes back in the screen door. I think I'm about to be victim of a home invasion it's so abrupt.

He sits down on th couch next to me. I haven't even stopped from playing F sharp major to F sharp minor alternately. He starts cycling through his camera of the previous night. Not only do I get a play-by-play, but I pretty much get a powerpoint presentation of it. He finally stops the slideshow at a tongue to breast picture. My brain is scarred.

Then this happens: "Dude, I was gonna come get you last night. She asked if I'd grab you because she likes to have two dudes at once. Like..." I'll paraphrase the rest. In the blue movie biz they refer to it as MFM. It's like the letter "H." He gets into some detail here that's not worth repeating. He says she is coming back from Las Vegas in a month and maybe then.

I simply reply in a monotone, "I'll keep my eye out for the evite, man. Hey, what does she do for a living? She seems like a nice girl."

He says back, "She's a masseuse."

At this point, I just start laughing and say "Is that what they call it now?"

He left and my mancave was mine again. I moved on to F sharp Dorian to F Sharp Lydian alternating. Consequently, slept like a baby except for the dream of hooking up with Dakota Fanning that woke me up. That was gross. It was an older Dakota Fanning, though, that seemed more like Tatum O'Neal in Bad News Bears. I cannot be held responsible for my dream state.

You've Got To Therapize.

I'm going to try and get this all down before it slips away. I'm on my patio with a smoke in my mouth, typing furiously like a caricature of an overrated and not really comparable Hunter S.. Let me start by saying that I had a beer before going to the therapist, which I don't think is a terrible move.

I rolled up on my bike and locked it up and started walking to his office and bumped into him on the corner playing with his kid. You could tell that he keeps his relationship very professional with patients and saves everything for the room so we didn't talk that much and I met him at his office. It was either that or he didn't want me near his kid because he thought I was batshit crazy and just wanted his $200 for the session.

We jumped right in. I told him that I was feeling pretty good since we last met and did the sadness exercise for five minutes and then one more intense version of it while playing Tiger Woods on Xbox whilst imbibing some beers and listening to my sad playlist titled "mixt8p" on my iPod. He thought it was interesting that I could turn sadness on and off like I can. I told him that I noticed when something disturbs me I start to grin. It's creepy. I've never noticed it before. I discussed how it feels like I've always got some guy sitting in the room with me who is sad now. It's just weird knowing that he is there now. He's my elephant in my room. So, still practicing the sadness exercises in short bursts. Only 29 years to let out. The word "manic" was brought up at one point, but more pointed to a manic mechanism to deal with intense pain by smothering it with intense unpain. Pain't, if you will.

We discussed the not eating. He explored whether it was a sort of self-punishment fueled by guilt versus self-destruction. I told him that I just didn't find real pleasure in eating and found it more like fueling, however could see it being some sub-conscious self-punishment. However, after talking about it more, it may be a result of DUI commitments breaking up a routine that I relied on post-divorce for structure. Trader Joe's on Monday. Laundry on Tuesday. Tacos on Thursday. Soccer on Friday. You'll never know what I did on Wednesday. These things kept me afloat while I rebuilt my personality following the divorce. The DUI commitments broke this up and I never reestablished them. This resulted in a feeling of chaos for me. This is this week's homework: Rebuild routine.

Next, we dealt with the ex-wife. He was really impressed that I still have feelings for her. Not in a loving way, but a very deep friendship and trust. This came out when I told him that I called her after my DUI because she is one of the people that I trusted the most. This is the most ironic thing that you've ever heard, but it's true. It's not like she is invited to my birthday or anything, but if we were both stranded on an island or stuck in a Wal-Mart after closing and couldn't get out, we're not going to try to strangle each other. We'd figure our way out of it and then go back to our respective lives. You can't deny all of the reasons that got two individuals to an altar. There had to be something there in most cases. People just change and grow apart. It's okay. He said that it showed that I processed everything that happened and was able to see past the loving relationship and anger and separate that from the friendship that actually was there on some level. He commented that this showed great hope for developing another strong relationship at some point in my life. That was encouraging.

We then talked about the sad clown. I feel that I have a lot to give and share. That's the "HughVoltage Show." That is why, and I apologize, that I will dominate a conversation in some instances. I just have so much fucking shit to say and feel that it has value. This, in turn, brought up the blog and the death of Dick Steele for the old timers. I use an alter ego to express all of these things that I want to share. It's funny that HughVoltage is writing this, right? I killed my last pseudonym as a way to escape him. I created a new one to feed that beast that wasn't being fed and needed to say a bunch of stuff to someone, to anyone who would read it. I asked him if I was schizo or something and he said that it was okay to have an alter ego like this. Also, it's hella easier to say you fucked the neighbor after drinking a handle of whiskey in which she asked afterwards "Do you have AIDS?" because she was from the South and thought everyone in California had AIDS, when your real name is not attached to it. Using an alter ego, you can bend truths and extrapolate on ideas and situations that may not have necessarily happened, but may entertain others. By the way, Sea World really happened and most of this stuff has, it's the arrogant and sometimes reckless opinions that can be attributed to HughVoltage. Maybe he is the one that hates cat ladies. He's definitely the one that proposed the group DAMM (Drunks Against Mad Mothers).

We talked about the girl that reads the blog briefly and he asked if I sometimes imagine what people's reactions will be when I write. Fuckin-A right, I do. There are so many times when I write something down and there is a hidden joke in the word choice that I just hope someone is going to get. In some instances, the one person that would get it. I used to communicate with my ex through my Dick Steele column on a few occasions. Those columns were my peacock feathers. There are actually a few times, too, where I hope someone spits their coffee out on their keyboard while reading. Sometimes it just cracks me up so I've got to write it down somewhere. It's my attempt at getting someone to hear awesome falling in the woods even though they are not necessarily in the woods.

We also got back to the survivor instinct that has taken over. It's most likely related to years 20 to 21 in the city, basically on my own. This is where it really blossomed. There are also a few tinges of family dysfunction in that I looked to some type of Norman Rockwell painting idea of what family should be and didn't see it and just let it go forever. Ummm, let me see, an aunt that is never mentioned anymore who was a prostitute in Oakland and was nice enough to manage to give you an adopted brother who was born addicted to heroin. Yeah, we don't talk about it at dinner, but this never happened on Growing Pains. This was brought up when I told him that I called my dad on Father's Day after dragging my feet a bit. My dad was tending to his livestock and I left a message. Still haven't heard back. He said that I called expecting disappointment and when it happened, it had absolutely no effect. He said it was okay. He said that I didn't have to feel guilty about that.

So, I think that about covers it. He said that it seems like I know what I need to do and I just need to do it. The insight and outlook all seem to be there. I'll be completely honest, I have no idea how me talking for most of the time can make me feel so much better, but I genuinely am feeling better. I smile when I'm happy now and not just when a particularly sad lyric or a particularly bad memory trigger occurs. Rewiring, really. There actually may be a happy ending to this. I believe it now. I also believe that sasquatch exists. You never really know how it's all going to unravel, but it's no reason to ravel it back up. You've just got to sit back and watch it...and be ready for anything. Anything.

Getting Overdoing It

I was going through my Loni archives and came across a document titled "Seven AM." Oh, Loni is my old computer from college. I had two computers, one was called Loni and one was called Burt. They fought consistently until I decommissioned Loni, but moved her hard drive over to Burt. Loni will forever be in the heart of Burt. I think I'm creating small chores for myself this morning as I procrastinate calling my dad on Father's Day. I'll eventually call him, I always do, but it always feels like a chore.

So, I opened the document and it was something I wrote a while back. I suppose it was the first entry in what was going to be my great work that put a veil of fiction over what was really autobiographical passages that used third person rather than first in an attempt to distance myself from the real events. So, here it is. I just read it for the first time in probably at least three years. It totally overdoes it, but I'm trying to write more and I suppose it could be a starting point.

He walked from his apartment door to the walkway to the parking lot. The fifteen steps that it took felt like he was walking on a planet of Jell-O, mounted on top of a carousel while he was wearing Doc Martens with wet socks and one boot untied. He knew that already he was an hour into the longest day of his life and it was only seven in the morning. He went to take a sip off of his coffee cup and realized that he didn’t even have it and there was no way that he could go back through that door. He hoped he would never have to, but knew that eventually he was going to.

Without coffee, frame of mind and cigarettes he dragged his ass to a 1993 Nissan Sentra that was on its last leg and he would be lucky to even make it up the hill on the way to work in third gear, but he went anyway. There was simply no other option.

The ride into work felt like it took two days and it very may well have had he known the way the sleepless nights were going to start blending into each other. Days would have no meaning anymore, weekends would be worse than weekdays as every day was just another interruption into sleep attempts filled with Tylenol PM dreams.

This day would turn into weeks, then months, then a year showing no signs of relief, but tiny short lived distractions from self-indulged pain would at least flip a switch on his brain to off temporarily.

He refused to be a victim, then refused to medicate instead choosing to endure something that he didn’t even understand he could feel at the age of twenty nine.

Someone had snuck up behind him and pulled the rug that he so depended on from beneath his feet and then as he fell, put a knife solidly in his back as they pushed him from behind down a rabbit hole. When he woke up and looked up at the dim light peeking through the top of the hole and stopping three feet from his face he would feel lonelier than he ever had before.

At this moment, he found himself sitting at his desk in an uncomfortable chair leaning forward in a posture that CAL-OSHA could never approve, staring at information simply occupying a screen and offering nothing. It was lunch time, but hunger didn’t happen anymore. Only cravings for cigarettes that never made him feel any better, but could make ten minutes disappear from his life. Plus, as a bonus, could take some time off down the line. Life had become a series of activities intended to kill time and himself in ten minute increments. That was his new purpose. Gone were the days of living his life for someone else. He would never pull a panty liner off of a pair of dirty underwear while doing someone else’s laundry. He would never again have to sit through a pilates class to please someone else. If ever diagnosed with a terminal disease, he hoped that his last days on earth would feel like this, everlasting.

Therapy, working out, doing laundry, and blacking out in exchange for feeling blue filled the nights between the days that lasted forever filled with a green tint of envy and grayness from a cloud that he knew was floating above him most of the time that was there to block out the yellow sun.

That was definitely the worst birthday ever.

Two Hundred Seventy Five Bones For 75 Minutes of The Rapy

I went to therapy yesterday. It was time. The last three or so years were spent expending a tremendous amount of energy to tread mental water in an effort to break even emotionally. I've managed to get pretty comfortable at zero on a mental number line. I don't feel sad, but I don't feel happy. I feel manageable. So, here are some highlights.

We started off just going through some aspects of who I was and got to the point where the therapist asked if I wanted to work with the divorce or my childhood. I told him that the divorce was pretty much locked down and dealt with so we moved to my background starting at the beginning. He asked me what my first childhood memory was and I told him that it was my race car blanket as a kid. It's funny because I've used that line to pick up a girl before and let him know that. The blanket thing carried on to a gray blanket that I had and finally let go of when I moved out of my apartment when I separated with my ex. It's gone. I have no blanket anymore, but my mom was nice enough to make me a new quilt. It's not a security item anymore, though.

He then asked if I've always been a sad a person. I told him that I think I actually have always been a sad person internally, but never let anyone know if I can help it. I mentioned that as a kid my mom had referred to me as Eeyore for being a sad little kid and that I often identified with Charlie Brown. It turns out that I use humor and self-deprecation as a result of an emotional trigger as soon as I feel myself getting sad. Internally, it's an unaccepted emotion that sends me into a flight mode. The way he described it is that as soon as I feel it and recognize that my toe is in a depression puddle, I jump out and away from it and try not to experience the sadness. This results in what some have seen as the "HughVoltage" show. It's almost manic, but is very entertaining externally as I'm pounding the shit out of internal sadness. This has resulted in me building layer upon layer of other feelings on top of the bad ones since I was about five. Fighting sadness for much of my life because I felt alone in the world. Total sad clown.

So, as homework, I was told to connect my mind to my sadness and to try and experience it rather than fight it. I tried it last night and it was super freaky. It went like this. I got ready for bed and tried to tap into it a little bit. I made the connection as I lay in bed in the dark. At first I could feel it trying to creep in and actually feel myself fighting it and then stopped myself after about five minutes and the sadness just completely overwhelmed me. I let it go for a little bit and then just turned it off again. It was really weird and uncomfortable, but I've seen it now and can actually feel it underneath everything now. It almost physically resides two inches behind my face while I smile at you and make jokes. The real creepy thing is that I recognize it now and it has been there forever. I just compartmentalized it and have refused to recognize it for what it is. It's hard to explain. I guess it might be like having a mole on your arm that you never really paid attention to and then you saw some news story on skin cancer and can't stop noticing it.

So, the next thing we covered is going to be a little disturbing for those close to me, but he said it, not me. I've written about the little crazy inner demon that is about five years old and takes things over occasionally before. Apparently, I was right on with that. Here's how it works and I need to preface this with a warning that no one is to blame for this, but it's there. He said that because of my dad leaving at five and having such a young mother, I never had a real childhood because I felt that I had to take care of myself. I never really felt safe or that I could trust anyone to take care of me. This separated me from those close to me including my parents. It created a part of me that wanted to be taken care of, but never believed anyone could. It's why I feel separated even among family and friends and even more so around strangers. I have a hard time accepting help or gifts from people because of this. I try to do everything on my own and have a hard time developing empathy for those that can't keep up with me because I feel that I worked so hard to get where I am and they should have to, too. I see this now. It's why I subscribe to social Darwinism so much. So, I want to be taken care of, but won't let you. I'm a wounded bird.

We then covered the "What makes you happy/when have you been happy?" question. This is pretty standard and I think about it all the time. Music, writing, soccer and being with family were the four topics. There was also a tinge of the work project successes. I genuinely love figuring out complex problems at work. This was encouraging as I thought work was the stem of all my problems. Fuse may be a better word than stem for that one. By not participating in those things as much as I'd like, I get frustrated and self-medicate with alcohol until the feelings subside. This also coincides with an internal voice that tells me that I'm not good at them anyway. Happiness is only experienced through the eyes of others acceptance. If awesome falls in the woods and no one is there to see it, did awesome really matter?

I discussed happiness in the workplace with a friend the other day. I asked him if he liked his job and he replied, "Fuck no." I then asked him why he went everyday and he said to pay his mortgage and other assorted debts. I followed that up with "What's your dream job then?" He said he didn't know. That's exactly where I am. I've been beat into submission so hard by the expectations of work and the status quo that I don't even know what would be a dream job anymore or what makes me happy. I'll say that I want a happy life, but I don't even know what that would be at this point. I want to travel. Well, fuckin' where? I want a girlfriend. Well, what would she even be like? I want things, but at this stage none of them can be defined. It's really frustrating.

The therapist followed up the happy talk with "Have you ever felt guilty for any successes or being happy in life?" Sadly, he totally hit it on the head with that one. Somehow, I've developed guilt for things that happen to me that are good. I never feel that I deserve anything good to happen to me. This explains why I have a hard time accepting relationships with the oppo sex. If a pretty girl likes me, I honestly, have no idea why. This is not good, but I think we will work on this.

We discussed my relationship with my ex-wife and what I liked about it as it lasted a long time. I told him that it was the "nothing" part of it that I loved dearly. I really loved the time that myself and the ex spent doing nothing. That was the true test. If you like someone so much that being in line with them at the DMV or sharing a crossword puzzle on a Sunday morning completely satisfies you and you never want it to end, you've won. Congratulations.

So, let me see, he complimented me on being extremely self-aware of myself and what happens to me internally. I identify things that happen internally and have learned how to control many of my self-destructive tendencies and at the very least can recognize them. It's kind of why I'm seeing him. I know that some things are not right. Sadly, this works against me in some instances because I recognize my fallibility too clearly at times and will attack myself for it.

So I think that about covers it. I go again next week. The ironic part about this whole exercise is that I've always thought boozing was my main problem, but that's actually pretty controlled at this point. It could be better, but it's been way worse as recently as a year ago. Anyway, the therapist is right across from my bar that I walk to from my apartment. So, my self-medication destination and my cry for help destination are 50 yards from each other. Brilliant.

iPhuckin Give Up

Last week, I was treating myself to a VentiNonFatVanillaLatte and a yogurt parfait from Starbucks on the way to work. I got into the fairly sparse line due to the fact that I work so early in the morning that it is almost the previous day when I get there. I say "hello" to my neighbor who gives me her complimentary pound of coffee every week and get my seventeen syllable order put together in my semi-lucid brain and try to link that to my tongue somehow with a wing and a prayer and wait patiently as I approach the barista.

I start to hear this sqeak that I assume is a glitch in the quintessential Starbucks XM feed of music. I'll say this about their music, it doesn't suck as bad as some places like dental offices, but it's not as good as the Bob Hope airport in Burbank. Anyway, it persists and it gets a little louder and worse and it feels close to me. I take a gander about the place and there is this lady that screams of feline female behind me. You can almost see the Fancy Feast cans overflowing from her purse. I look away and as I'm processing her upside down image from my eyeball to the back of my brain, I file away that she had a bird on her shoulder. I think to myself that it's just some residual effects from not being caffeinated and turn around again and sure enough she has a fucking bird on her shoulder.

Who the fuck are you, lady? Bring a fucking bird into Starbucks on your shoulder at 6:45 in the morning. I could understand if it was a seeing eye bird, but she looked like her vision was solid. The thing starts actually squawking at this point and she starts talking to it.

"Oh, baby. Don't bite mommy."

"Be quiet, baby. Mommy is trying to get a coffee."

"Calm down, baby."

Now, I could be way off here and maybe she got pregnant and gave birth to a baby bird, but Jesus Christ. There are bird people now? Bird people have just trumped cat people as my arch-nemeses. Arch-nemesists?

Also, my Motorola Razr was beginning to reboot in the middle of phone calls so I made a move and started researching phones. The counter culturalist that I like to consider myself said no iPhones. I ordered an LG Incite for free through my work and bumped up my data plan and again waited patiently for it to arrive. It showed up yesterday and I set it up for two hours and found it completely unusable as a phone. It was almost there, but not quite. Windows mobile. Sleek design. Shitty performance. Stupid stylus to navigate tiny icons. A completely unusable keyboard in conjunction with the screen. Good Try, LG. Anyway, after owning (phowning?) the phone for three hours, I found myself at the AT&T store begging for anything. I walked out with an iPhone with an oncoming Kool-Aid hangover from drinking that Apple Kool-Aid that I despise so much, but keep gulping down.

Sadly, so far, it's not that bad and I even have an application that acts as a guitar tuner, metronome and chord finder. It's really kind of awesome. So, per usual, I lay on my back and bare my neck to all of those that were subjected to my iPhone hate and I submit. I was wrong. Still, I miss my Razr a little bit.

The Enigma of the In-Betweens

Recently, my neighbor introduced me to self-psychoanalysis in tandem with Internet prescriptions. I'm not a fan of either, but it seems to be working for him and has served as inspiration to pursue at least one of those through proper channels. So, I've sought out a referral for a psychiatrist or psychologist. I don't know the difference between the two, but felt that either could lead to a significant improvement to my general outlook on life. I think one can hand out prescriptions. I think that's the difference.

There is this verse in "Philosophy," which has always served as one of my personal theme songs, by Ben Folds Five that goes "I've seen that there is evil and know that there is good and the in-betweens I never understood. Won't you look at me I'm crazy, but I get the job done. Yeah, I'm crazy, but I get the job done."

So, I've finally decided to deal with the crazy part. It's worked out fine until now, but it's becoming an annoying novelty. It hinders this pursuit of normalcy that I may not even want, but wouldn't mind a taste. I'm finding that having a retirement fund, paying taxes in January, wearing black socks with decent shoes and occasionally sporting a tie for a wedding or a funeral is not the true definition of "normal" that I've always thought it is.

I imagine "normal" to be an acceptance of all that is. I'm always convinced that there is something more. Something better. Like this isn't the life that I'm supposed to be living, but I'm also convinced that perhaps the key to happiness is accepting that this is your life. Exactly what is is exactly what you are supposed to be doing. It's exactly what you are supposed to be satisfied with.

Lately it started with stopping going to the gym because honestly, who cared. Then I noticed that I was smoking more. Next I noticed that I didn't feel like putting toilet seat liners down in the work bathroom. After that it was a general lethargicness and finally all I want to do is to go home to my mancave and sleep. I get lonely, but don't want to be around anyone.

It's not as bad as that paragraph makes it sound, but it's still not happy. I still get up early on Saturdays and clean my apartment, drink coffee and listen to good music, but I'm lacking "reason." Not the reason that culminates in rational thought and good judgment, but really a question of "Why?" Why do anything? The personal satisfaction related to feats of awesomeness is dwindling. If a tree falls in the woods, it's proven that no one hears it. If I do something awesome, it's been proven that no one notices or cares. Christ, I made pudding pops one Sunday and also invented the Cashew Chicken Burrito and no one was around to share in the deliciousness. Actually, the pudding pops were kinda gross. I used banana pudding and no one likes that.

So, why? I'm sure it's all related to my environment. I'm in a toxic environment surrounded by toxic people in a work environment that could be categorized meteorologically the same way that a weatherman would describe the forecast for Seattle in November. It's gray. I've lost faith in the people that sign my checks and have been disillusioned by 9:00 AM more than most people get disillusioned all day. At home I've got a neighbor that makes me fear growing old, lonely, and creepy. I can see the cat lady waddle to the elevator with a pull-along cart full of cat food. She only lives on the second floor and has clearly given up.

Now, I haven't given up hope. Instead, I've looked for ways to improve the situation. I'm trying to eat three times a day. Definitely cut back the booze. I'm looking at new places to move to. I almost got a new job until I got Charlie Browned, which my Aunt described as a typical Hugh Voltage situation. It'd be fine if she had said Hugh, but she used my real name. I try to cook more at home and just keep myself busy, but I'm not sure where it's all going. So, perhaps this whole post is just a dry run for therapy, but regardless, I'm aware that there are some loose parts rattling around in my skull for the time being.

I was recently told by someone I've never met, yet someone that I talk to more than almost anyone in my life currently (thank you, by the way), that I look "normal" in pictures, but that just triggered a thought I had the other day while driving. I was looking in my side mirror and thinking about how it says "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." I got home and was looking in my bathroom mirror and the statement flashed in my head again, but instead it said "Objects in mirror are farther away than they appear." Also, that person always manages to provide the pleasant surprises lately through music and books and just general pleasantries and somehow being there when the avalanche cascades. It seems that one of the few that seems to understand me, I've never met. Sounds like what some people consider God, but she talks back.

I'm sure it's just a case of the recurring Wednesdays (not good, not bad, the in-between day of the week), but I'm working on it and pretty sure I can get through it. It's mild compared to what I've made it through in the last five years and should be no sweat and involve less questionably legal activities. Yeah, I've got some scars, but should be fine moving forward.

Critical Mess

So, went on a date with my PT on Saturday. Going into it I was freaking out. Like stomach hurting stress. I woke up early Saturday morning and had a half a pot of coffee, watched soccer and tidied up my apartment. I smoked a little bit as I still had no idea what we were going to do.

She texted around Noon and said she'd be ready about 1:00. That worked. I told her to just meet me at my place and we would cab down to an art & wine festival. I sent her directions and told her just to call me when she gets into the abandoned shopping center. I got the text saying that she thought she was in an abandoned shopping center and walked out to meet her. It looked kind of foggy in the parking lot which was weird since it was about 90 degrees out. I looked to the left and one of the buildings and an adjacent tree was on fire. This was probably a sign.

I called her and told her to park closer to the apartment complex and pointed out that I called her before I called 911. We walked back to my apartment and I threw on my shoes and stuff for the art & wine thing and called a cab. I'm thinking that she thought that I didn't have a car, but even a girl is not worth a second DUI for a .04 BAC.

We got to the festival and went to lunch at this ripshit Mexican place that has awesome margartitas and we each got one. Conversation went well as I nibbled at some nachos and she got a veggie quesadilla. Topics included NASCAR, TV (Lost, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, 90210) and music. She liked Jeff Buckley's album Grace which really worked in her favor. She's a Cubs fan because her dad is from Chicago and she likes olde-tymey pictures from magazine covers and the like. She wants to get a tattoo of a butterfly with her mom and her sister, but hasn't because it violates some rules of her mom's people. She would rather be evacuated from an embassy by boat rather than helicopter and her life plan includes never getting a phone that receives e-mail.

It turned out to be a two plus hour lunch and she started yawning. Yeah, could've been the margarita and the heat, but this was the second date and the second time she started yawning. So, I settled up the tab and we went and got her a coffee. Grabbed a cab back to my place in which I referred to the dangerous at night park as "The Stabby Park" to the cab driver. She was not a fan of that remark. This was quickly followed by a walk her out to her car, an awkward hug and what felt like a girl making an escape.

It's been pointed out that this is the first time in 34 years that I've tried a normal courting process wihtout booze, bars or any other extraneous environmental issues to work to my advantage and I will admit that I hate it. Eventually, however, I need to do this without crutches or shortcuts. Eventually, it will have to work. In the meantime, my question is "This is how you really do it? Seriously?"

Regardless, it was good practice and has forced some super self analysis post-game. She was my kryptonite. I totally faked like I was something else the whole time because I thought that I would like her when I got to know her. If you read that sentence again, you will read volumes into how I set myself up for failure.

My problem was nailed in one statement made by the sage wisdom that is Pappy sometime ago: "You are in a hopeless cycle. If a girl likes you, you don't trust her due to poor character judgement because you don't like yourself and if she doesn't like you, you hang around to figure out why because you can't stand the fact that someone doesn't like you."

It's true for now. Scary.

Pet Smells

This weekend I had my first owning a pet experience. If you've read this before, you know that I desperately want to give up any type of hope and become a cat lady to fill all of those holes that I have in my life with hairballs and empty cans of Fancy Feast and this felt like the first step on the way there.

It started on Saturday afternoon after I burned the Canadian flag into my front while I lay by the pool and talked on the phone. I forgot to rub in the sunscreen because I was distracted with a 48 hour followup to hanging out with a girl.

I'm completely out of my element on this one. I'm used to "Hey, you're cute" then "Hey, I'm drunk" and then a phone number with a question mark after the first name that I'm never going to call. Honestly, this is the first time that I've made an effort responsibly and relatively sober and kind of hoped that something worked out. I have to be honest, it's not an incredible amount of fun, but I guess it's how the other half or 97% live. I'll try it.

Anyways, next to the pool I forgot to rub the sunblock in because I started eavesdropping on this chick that was talking about going to a Los Lonely Boys concert that night and I was really intrigued about who a typical Los Lonely Boys fan was. I thought they were always just the band that happened to be playing at the fair that day that you happened to be there.

I went back to my apartment after not learning too much about the LLB demographic. I did think that there might be a white trash element to it, but can't confirm that yet. My apartment smelled a bit foul and I thought it was the recycling or the trash so I hauled it all out and went so far as to actually attack the bins with an assortment of sprays and a roll of paper towels. Thought it was done.

I sat at my computer for a bit and could still smell it faintly. I did the obligatory nose to armpit and thought it could be me. I don't really smell ever, but didn't want to rule it out. So, showered.

A few hours later I could still smell it. I pulled everything out of the cupboards and cleaned them out. It smelled like cleaning produck at that point and covered up the gross smell.

The next morning it was in the kitchen area again. I was at a complete loss and went to Mother's Day in the city after making mixtapes for mom and sister all morning. I just relistened to one of the playlists and it's absolutely heartwrenching. It's like an audio suicide note. I'm wondering how that's going to go over and also why I was haing a Mother's Day morning funk like that.

Mother's Day was radical. My sister showed up from LA. There was a slowly escalating water arms war that eventually resulted in a broken window and blood. That's a badass Mother's Day.

Got home and walked in my door and it was an odor of death you could feel. The only thing that it could've been at this point were the floors. Vaccuumed and did the linoleum on hands and knees because I don't have a mop. The smell was still there and I went to grab my neighbor to borrow his nose because he doesn't smoke and probably has a better one.

He asked why and I told him I needed to locate the smell and he said that he had it in his apartment, too. Bingo. Light Bulb. Eureka. Uno. Tic-Tac-Toe. Yahtzee. It was a dead rat in the wall. Awesome.

So, I named it "Stinky" and will consider it domestic pet ownership until they extract it from the wall. In the meantime, this bitch is going to be tits up in Glade plug-ins and mandle burning.

Not In This Dojo

As the sun sets on my court-mandated, rehabilitative, community program that I playfully refer to as cocktail college, I thought that I would reflect on a discussion that we had last Monday. The exercise was to write down some things that you enjoyed as a child before you started drinking to assist you in tapping into that joy of life that you had as a child without involving booze. It's to prove to you that you can have a good time without boozing. You then have to pick one or a few of the things that you wrote down and try to do them in your near future or day-to-day life. Tag or a BB gun war, anyone?

Sadly, my list of things I did as a child were predominately things that I do now. There were some throwbacks in there, though, such as sidehacking and muddogging. Those would probably get me in trouble or maimed nowadays. Sidehacking is basically hanging as much of your body outside of the passenger window of a car while your friend drives erratically. Muddogging is taking snow toys to a hill of mud in the rain and treating it as if it were snow. Muddogging is brilliant.

So, we've got this venture capitalist guy in the group and he went down his list. He tries to be funny, but it always fails completely, so it's a tough read usually. Anyway, he went down his list of like chewing wood, eating Necco wafers and whatever and then said "doing karate." Motherfuckin' karate. The balls on the fucker. He then followed it up with karate as being the thing that he would like to get back into, "but it's complicated" he said.

I perked up and asked "Did you kill your sensei?" and waited for an answer.

He didn't answer. It was like he really may have killed his sensei, which we all know is never accepted in any dojo. Mercy? Not in this dojo. Failure? Not in this dojo. Killing your sensei? Not in anyone's dojo.

So now you know about proper dojo etiquette.

Would You Like Some Rain For Your Parade, Sir?

Yesterday was kinda rad. I was killing it in meetings. I was supposed to call the cute girl after work and then I got home and there was a pound of coffee on my doorstep from my neighbor that works at Starbucks. So, it's going great as I let myself into my apartment and then my neighbor takes a deep inhale off of his smoke and says "Hey, dude."

I turned and replied "What's up?" as I held my new coffee closely to my body and was teeming with anticipation of drinking the shit out of it Saturday morning.

"I started drinking again," he said "I got suspended from work and maybe fired and now I want to call that chick again to tell her that I'm sorry."

We had both cut back on our drinking, coincidentally, a week or two ago. He was drinking Gimlets at 8:30 in the morning and crying to me. Grown man crying is so uncomfortable.

I've done it. I know a man can be driven there sometimes. Christ, when I was going through my divorce I cried while watching Star Wars: Episode III and also during a Simpsons episode. It fucking happens. Anyway, he's been doing it a lot and he's 50 and has kids. I mean, there comes a point when you've got to take an assessment of the situation and realize that there is not a time and place to make a habit of cashing checks at a bar in the afternoon and drinking a gallon of vodka that comes in a plastic bottle at night. That wasn't me doing that, by the way. I have excellent credit and use direct deposit for my checks. I also only drink vodka from glass bottles and preferably with a cork.

Anyways, I started firing back at him "Dude. Number one. Start alternating those beers with fucking water. Number two. Eat something. I've got some food in my house and you can have it. Number three. You know that you are making it fucking worse by drinking that shit and you shouldn't have a drink until you have resolved all the toxic shit that you've had in your head. Down times are the worst times in the world to fucking drink."

He lost interest at that point as I stood there in disbelief of all the shit that had just come out of my mouth. It was all the right things rather than "Fuggit, dude. Let's booze."

So, he went back inside and I was feeling kinda awkward and it totally ruined my free coffee buzz. Just then, my ten year old neighbor was cruising by and yelling to his dad that he was bored. So, like a succubus that feeds on youthful exuberance, I had him over for some xbox time. We played some Rock Band and I let him play my Kozik guitroller and we were having a blast. Then his "girlfriend" came over and they nudged me out of the game to talk to his dad for a bit about high school sports. High school sports is the worst topic EVAR. I'm almost to the point of telling him that that topic is off limits, but he feeds me, so...Anyway, he went and grabbed me a Chile Colorado burrito that is off the chain for distracting his son so that he could have some dad time. Totally good tradeoff. I got a child's outlook on life and fed and he got to troll facebook. That , my friends, is true symbiosis.

Let's Get Physical Therapied

I went to physical therapy for an ankle sprain that was getting kind of unpredictable. It would just constantly roll. I would be walking and it would just go out like getting flat tired or something. You know, like when someone walks behind you and steps on the back of your shoe? That shit never gets old.

So, over a six week period I developed a crush on my physical therapist. She was a little mousey girl, kinda young and looked like she would be totally by the book, but had an appreciation for the smell of Thera-band. I like that in a girl.

By the second appointment, it was a bona fide crush. There is a hitch here, though. My personal definition of a crush involves something that is totally and completely unattainable. Like my crush on the e-surance girl. As the sessions went on she started to play along with my inane conversations and would follow me off topic of ankles and balance drills. She seemed to be genuinely enjoying hanging out for our hour a week. I chalked it up to a courteous bedside manner, but was developing a thing for her.

My ankle was pretty much rehabbed two weeks earlier than planned and I told her that we didn't need to have rehab anymore, but she told me to come back and work on my balance. That's when the conversation happened that changed everything. I was trying to balance on one leg on a foam pad with my eyes closed. It's way harder than it sounds.

I said "This is really hard. You aren't going to make me juggle now, are you?"

She said "Have you ever surfed?"

I replied with my eyes closed "No. Have you?"

She replied "No."

I just started cracking up and fell down and said back to her "Then why are we talking about it?"

I still get a kick out of that conversation.

Anyway, I finished up and she gave me her card on our last scheduled day and I was a little bummed that I wouldn't get to see her anymore. After two weeks I did the unthinkable and sent her an e-mail to her work e-mail thanking her for fixing me and then asked her out...over e-mail. It felt horrible and gross, but it fucking worked. It was also a better call than hurting myself again so that I could pay $35 a week to see her again. That felt dirty. I'm still shocked, but celebrated with one beer after I received her reply. One beer in eleven days. This is a new Hughge.

So, anyway, finally figured out how to ask a girl out when not drowning rationality and tact in ten Ketel & Sodas in a bar and then not remembering what the girl looked like the next day.

Speaking of that, as I hit that lucid state last night at 9:48 PM on Cinco De Mayo, my phone beeped letting me know that a text was coming in. You can also hear a pop in the alarm clock speakers a few seconds before this happens. I hate that. Anyway, my brain tucked away my almost dream of a dude in a Carpeteria jacket eating a cartoon taco and I checked the message. It was a number with no name asking me to go down to the bar to meet for drinks. It took me a second and I think I figured out who it was. Here's the story:

Was at the bar down the street from my house and just getting a toe in the water for getting heated. I was walking to the bathroom and saw this girl. She was a Ginger, which is normally not my type, but for some reason I ended up talking to her for a few hours and we exchanged numbers. You should never trust a ginger. It's totally documented.

About a week later, she texted me. It was my birthday and some Sangria had pretty much punched me in the face at dinner with my parents for my birthday, but I went out anyway letting her know that my charm may take a small hit due to the fight with a pitcher of Sangria, but she was game anyway. I hung out with her friends and had some drinks and everyone was getting along, but there was no connection I felt with her.

Long story short, at the end of the night, we were talking out in front of the bar and I wasn't getting a vibe from her so while we were talking I clicked my phone open and navigated to her name in my contacts directory. I then said good night and deleted her name out of my phone right in front of her and then walked away. What a prick?

Anyway, I think her name was Kendall and I think she texted last night. Her name is in my phone now as First Name: "Kendall?" Last Name: "Bar".

Re: (g)Urgent

Got a memo in my inbox this morning from HR at work. The subject line said "RE: Urgent" so I grabbed my emergency survival kit that I'm required to keep at my desk as a part of organizational policy and moved on to the e-mail. I bend the rules on this a little since one day I ate my rations to see what they tasted like and then refilled the kit with Glenfiddich scotch and a pack of Parliament recessed filter cigarettes. Both will act like currency when the grid goes down and buy me three times as many rations as the original kit held.

So, there I am clutching my survival kit and reading the attached memo. It was titled...I've got to fudge this a little bit or I could probably get in toruble. Basically, it was my organization's policy for returning to work if returning from a trip to Mexico. Here are the highlights.

"For seven consecutive days after returning home, take your temperature each morning before going to work." You are allowed to come to work if your temperature is below 100 degrees and do not have a runny nose, sore throat, nasal congestion or cough.

Umm. Sounds like allergies combined with a hangover so far.

Now, for the if you do portion. It says you should contact your doctor. That's super brilliant. Oh, and you should tell your doctor that you just got back from Mexico. Just for fun, tell him it was via Thailand and you got into some weird shit over there with ping pong balls and three trannies and a scooter.

Now, if after seven days, your temperature is good, you can stop taking your temperature.

Wait, not done yet. Say this next part in a Jeff Foxworthy voice. If you have not been to Mexico recently, but have been in contact with someone who has? You just might have swine flu.

So, all of this is all fine and dandy, but they added one stipulation to the e-mail they sent out the memo with. It said this applies to all faculty and staff except for one group. Of course, the group is the portion that is primarily hispanic. Love it. The one group that probably has the highest chance of visiting Mexico is not part of this policy.

In the meantime, all hypochondriacs driven by fear, raise a glass and let's toast to the new disease to fear while we ponder waiting in line under a makeshift tent at the nearest hospital.

And We're Back

Wishful conversation at work:

(Real part) Douchebag: "It smells like tobacco Hugh must be at his desk."

Wishful reply: "That's funny. I thought it smelled like assholes and thought that you must be near my desk."

So, stuff should be getting exciting again. I've been pretty much dead man walking at work which has caused an "unsettled" mental meteorological mood. The dead giveaway was a request from my boss to put together a document of all my job duties with examples and time commitments of each. That means a raise justification unless you've just gone through a round of layoffs. In that situation it's a deathblow.

Work stress has become nearly debilitating at times and makes me just want to sleep all the time. I applied for a new job and that was going extremely well, but unraveled last Friday. I retired to my man-cave with a sense of defeat, but was lured out for a Friday night late birthday dinner. Dinner was delicious. The resulting cop beatdown was an epiphany.

So, there have been some cosmic coincidences lately that were ignited by the beatdown. For the record, I was wasted, but being responsible and walking to a couch to crash on. I'd say that they were justified for a drunk in public, but there wasn't even any public around. I was walking down a suburban street minding my own business. When one cop's knee pushed my face into the pavement by way of his knee to the back of my neck I realized I needed to make some life changes. Had I not asked him to pull out my wallet and check my ID and look up the same name with a ",SR" on the end of it, it could have ended quite badly. No cop wants to beat up a cop's son. They got me a cab and for the bargain price of $30 I averted a complete disaster.

The next morning I decided to try and put things into the proper place and put a toe in the alcohol abstinence pool. I figured if I eliminated that chaos variable that the resulting chaos would be much more imaginable. It feels like a false promise, but it's something I need to do while I'm trying to figure out what's next. It's an awesome super power to be able to destroy anything and create complete havoc while drinking, but x-ray vision would be way cooler as a super power. Even my super power of being able to look at kids on swings or bikes and make them stack is a better super power.

The morning turned to evening and I noticed three kids sneaking around my front patio like squirrels orchestrating a bird seed heist from a bird feeder. I thought they were friends with my neighbor's kids and just dismissed it when I saw one of them dart past my sliding glass door. When they appeared a second time I thought I would ask them what they were doing. One of them replied "Nothing." I in turn said back, "Sure, dude." I had just officially became a "get off my fuckin' lawn you kids" adult.

I let my neighbor know that there was some Tom Fuckery going on on his porch and then about an hour later he knocked on my door to tell me that someone took his cooler. The same cooler that he always stocks with cold beers for his neighbors. One neighbor who had cried at me at 8:30 that morning while he drank a vodka gimlet and told me that he had called in sick to work with the excuse that he was picking up his son from jail. Helluva an excuse. I'd go swine flu before I used that. So, anyway, I see the cooler theft as a sign that maybe some dudes need to cool their drinking jets. Last night he confided in me that he's begun going to AA classes, which is not a bad idea. So, that was cosmic coincidence two. I'm expecting some other type of Budweiser recall to be cosmic coincidence three.

So, anyway, I'm going to try to quit booze and see how this fucked up freak flag is going to unfurl. My best chance of winning is to have full control of all my wits, but it's really hard to motivate in a situation like this. Even then, being well fed and well rested is the name of the game, so eating and sleeping are the first step towards getting through it. It's scary is all.

Sadly, this horrible memory of my mom standing above me while I was a sad seven year old and singing "Every party needs a pooper that's why we invited you..." and then calling me "Eeyore" because I was a bummed out little kid all the time is on repeat in my head. Just goes back to the plain fact that I'm a giant manbaby. Thank god, it'll all work out based on the one fact that it has to.

Shenanigregarious

Whelp. I pretty much don't blog anymore. So, here's a quick update working backwards.

Last night I did my second public access appearance on a local soccer show. My segment is basically three to five minutes of unscripted shenaniganery. The first appearance I had a slight buzz on and it was on Cristiano Ronaldo getting a pregame mani/pedi. It was pretty easy and discussed his penchant for Ferraris and diving.

Last night's was on the Beckham AC Milan debacle. It was a little more difficult and I was super sober (semi on the wagon right now). It's all green screen and the backgrounds are as public accessy as anyone could ever imagine, but I'm learning how to work with it and look into the camera rather than turning to talk to the guy asking me questions.

So, last night my prep consisted of a text that said "We're going to talk about Beckham tonight." I texted back, "What's our angle?" and received a response that said "B there at 8."

Sweet. We had nothing. So, dude goes through this youtube segment of soccer clips and it's going all wrong and his elephant soccer clip turns out to be just an elephant walking around not playing soccer like it was supposed to. Apparently, he had the wrong clip.

So, we go through our back and forth about Beckham's possible transfer to AC Milan which breaches his MLS contract in an obscene way. It moves on to what was Posh wearing and some other inane topics and scamboogery. At the end, the other dude asks, "Is there anything else that you'd like to talk about?" I reply, "Yeah, I was watching that clip you had of that elephant and I was wondering do you think that Nike makes elephant balls? You know, like elephant balls for elephants to play soccer with?"

At this point, I start cracking up while everyone in the studio is just looking at me stunned because I said elephant balls. Of course, everyone in the studio consists of a dude in suspenders, a guy that looks like he owns a van with no windows for the sole reason of not clashing with his moustache, and two high school volunteers running the cameras. Also, this is more people than will ever watch the show when it airs.

So, I finished the show and took off. I think it may have been my last show. The preceeding show, I caught some guff for repeating the term "Meat Tube" rather than youtube over and over again. To be completely honest, though, it's kind of fun. Painful as hell to watch and I feel really bad for taking the spot of Chess Diva #6 on public access, but that's the business for ya.

Recommended things:
1) I was a huge fan of KEXP and listen to it on Flycast whenever I can at home. Truth is radio died, but is being slowly resurrected via the Interwebs. I listen to KCRW in the morning at work and also enjoy Indie Pop Rocks on SomaFM. I've got a new one out of LA that I listen to now. Apparently, it shutdown and moved to the Internet and it's really good. It's KDLD 103.1. I'd love to hear stuff like this on the radio rather than listen to preprogrammed crap that ClearChannel wants me to listen to. I'd also like to point out that I've never heard Linkin Park on any of the above stations and that is a good thing. They FUCKING suck. You know that you are either older or that radio is super crappy when you've got talk radio going on AM. That's a bad sign.

2) The 33 1/3 book series by Continuum is an excellent way to further enjoy some of the most classic albums ever made. I recommend ordering a few and spending a Sunday with the headphones on while you read one of these. I did the Paul's Boutique edition last week and was floored by how awesome it was. The first section opened up with a history of the origins of the album. The second section broke down the album song by song. It was like discovering a classic album all over again. Paul's Boutique, especially. I remember the first time I heard that album, I was like "What the fuck?" and it turned out to be probably comparable to when the generation before me heard Sgt. Pepper's. It changed everything and just got better with every listen. The album could definitely be described as rich. John Darnielle from the The Mountain Goats wrote the one on Master of Reality by Sabbath and Colin Meloy from the The Decemberists wrote one on The Replacements' Let It Be. I'm working on the Aja entry now and needless to say, there is a glossary.

3) Lastly, I'd like to recommend a wonderful concoction that I stumbled on. Cap'n Crunch (no crunchberries) and Breyer's natural vanilla ice cream. One word describes this: fuckingretarded.

Happy Hump Day. Enjoy yourself.

Shittibank vs. Mint

I recently began using mint.com to manage my finances after using Quicken forever. Quicken was cool and very well integrated online, but mint.com was just way easier to setup and maintain and over the last couple of months has proved to be an extremely positive experience.

So, I was checking out my accounts the other day because I love to watch my money whether it's expanding or failing miserably via my retirement account and I noticed that I had a 14.99% APR on my favorite card. It's black and awesome and used to have an APR of 4.52% which I really liked. I have never missed a payment and pay a lot on it every month as it's my primary bar tab card. I'll admit that it's been misplaced a few times and their customer service has been incredible on it.

The card was lifted in Vegas and they shut down the charges and killed the card swiftly and ably over the phone. I thought that the APR had to be a bug with mint and logged on to my account to check it out and sure enough it said 14.99%.

I checked out my past statements and November's had the 4.52% on it while December's had the 14.99%. I sent an e-mail off to their customer service asking if I had been a bad customer or something and they replied that it was due to the current condition of the financial markets and that I was sent the new terms and conditions and given the opportunity to opt-out if I wanted to. Now, in between convenience checks and bullshit that they send, I didn't read the 32 page fold out statement of terms and conditions, that's my bad. Who reads that?

To their credit, they gave me a second opportunity to opt-out, which to me, screamed that they tried to pull one over on their customers and got called on it. What kind of business outside of the oil business can you justify a 300% rate increase and get away with it? Furthermore, I live within my means. I haven't purchased a home because I can't afford it. I haven't bought a new car because I would rather pay my credit card bills down. Why should I be responsible for them or their customers' negligence?

So, I weighed out my options and decided to opt-out. The opt-out entails keeping my old APR until the expiration date on the card and then the account will close and remain until it is paid off. It will be paid off by that time, so I don't even get why I would choose to keep the 300% rate increase unless I never read the document. Honestly, there were no Pros to those Cons. That would be the best critique of prison writing that any prison writing program critic could ever write.

The question is how many others is this happening to or am I the only one that doesn't read all the mail that his credit card company sends him? Honestly, I've learned that if my bill isn't in the envelope, it's junk. Hmmm. Maybe if they quit sending convenience checks they could save that money that they need to provide their exceptional service and benefits. Then on top of all this, you have the bail out and their private jet they had to send back. Should I be feeling bad for them enough to say "Yeah, man, you've had a rough patch, so let me pick up the tab." They are not your mom-and-pop liquor store that you can justify paying more for convenience because they are a local business. They are not even your uncle with a drinking and gambling program that lost his rent in Reno one weekend.

Regardless, the whole thing kind of pissed me off and made feel a bit vulnerable. The moral? Read your goddamn mail or pay the price. Also, mint.com is pretty rad. I figured out my account had been messed with because they showed me cards that I could get that would be better than those existing.

So Rad

I need this for desk tchotke at work real bad. I just added it to my Amazon wish list. Ladies and gents. The Playmobil Airport Security Checkpoint playset.

Also, the Playmobil baby in an incubator is kinda tight.


OMG. Playmobil office equipment set is rad.

Won't You Sign In Stranger

It's been a month. I was accused of moving the blog and writing it under another fake name. In truth, I was just lazy and uninspired. Could be the TV. Could've been the weather. Could've been work. Could've been a variety of things, but it's not worth analyzing.

Here are some highlights. The coolest thing that happened was receiving nunchucks from my sister for Christmas. Scratch that. I actually almost received nunchucks. Instead, it was two pieces of wood and some chainlink. If they were connected it would be a felony unless used in a martial arts exhibition. Therefore, they are illegal if you suck at nunchucking and legal if you are good. Let's just say that if I did have nunchucks, I would probably have hit myself in the mouth with them about two weeks ago while chucking under the influence.

Now, in reference to their legality, how fucking stupid is that law? You break into my apartment to steal my TV that I love so much that I would write up a proposition to make it legal to marry it and you wake me up mid-theft. I come out in my underwear with my nunchucks. Pop-quiz, hotshot. Would you rather I had a gun or a pair of nunchucks? It's a no-brainer, but I don't have a large group of nunchuck enthusiasts in California that vote, so this is what we get. Watch for the NNA, though. I will start the National Nunchuck Association and make Mark Wahlberg our President due to the passing of Chuck Heston. I believe the rules are that the President must be the lead from Planet of the Apes and that's the best we've got.

Speaking of groups/associations, I've finished my community service for my Blottaux Pas. It wasn't that bad, but it was time consuming. The first weekend following it, I'll admit, I felt weird being at home on a Saturday morning. I'm not saying that I missed it, but it felt weird and I did have a small raking jones in the morning. So, after going through everything that I've gone through so far and still having a weekly meeting for the next five months and a zero tolerance for three years and a black smear on my record for ten, I'm starting to feel a little pissed at the California chapter of MADD (Motherrs Against Drunk Driving).

Yes, I empathize with people that have experienced loss due to people acting negligently, but I think in California they overdo it a bit. I mean fuck, okay, my bad. I've learned my lesson. Can we just move past this? I do feel lucky that I didn't hurt anyone or myself. I feel really fuckin' fortunate in fact, but get fucking over it. It's so typical of a woman and feels like a horrible marriage has been struck up with the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. It's just no fun. Let it go. I'm sorry.

So, while I bear my scarlet three letters of D, U, and I, I'm getting myself a little divorce from this group that has just been riding my ass for making a mistake and refusing to accept my apology. I'm putting my own association together called DAMM (Drunks Against MADD Mothers).

It's not pro drunk driving, but it's pro forgiveness. It's pro let people get the fuck on with their lives. It's pro let people dig their own fuckin' graves and make their own fates possible without trying to control their behaviors through administrative bullshit. The best I can do at this point is to vote against anything they support in the form of propositions. I actually checked last November and did vote against anything they supported.

In fact, I think the BAC laws are completely relative. So, the legal limit is .08. That is whether I'm 6' 4" and 340 pounds or 4' 6" and 40 pounds. That is completely aside from the fact that people have different tolerances based on their familiarity with blottopia.

For instance, if I've had eight beers and am driving behind some soccer mom drinking a chai latte and talking on a cell phone while wiping up her kids fucking applesauce that's all over his face, I'm less of a danger to anyone on the road and she has a .00 and I've got a .10.

Actually, I'm extremely agile and resilient when under the influence. I would throw down the challenge of my inebriated agile self against Joe Grande Iced Mocha in a variety of tests like cabular impact absorption (absorbing impact from chartered transportation), long distance falling, and breaking and entering into secure objects (getting inside your house and into bed without keys).

So, anyway, say I perform a battery of tests at the DMV including monkey bars and running through tires on an obstacle course and as soon as I can do it without being awesome, that's my legal BAC. I think I could easily pull off a .18 while still remaining relatively awesome. Doesn't this seem a lot more fair, the idea of earning your BAC? Honestly, it just makes a lot more sense to me, but is definitely against the grain in a society of people that feel they are owed something just for being here.

Anyway, trying to write more and feliz ano nuevo.

Round and Round

So, we were on the bus. For those that have not been forced to give back to the community in lieu of serving jail time, there are wheels on the bus. They go round and round. Round and round. I kinda get where Ratt got the idea for the song now.

The bus cruises down the freeway. We still have no idea where we are going as I stare out the barred windows trying to get my bearings in case there is some type of riot and I have to find my way home. It's me. It could happen. It's a ragtag bunch of dudes. There are dudes with tattoos of stars behind their ears, the dudes who can't speak a lick of English with what looks like their kids' backpacks because they are obviously too small and feature cartoon characters, and the club kids who look like they just got on the bus from gettin' down up in da club. A dead give away to these dudes is the crooked army cap.

We are so South of San Jose by the time the bus pulls off the freeway that we could be in Fresno. Ahhh, Fuck. It's Fresno. We're not really in Fresno, but the only landmark that I can pick up is a Golfland about a quarter of a mile before we turn into the yard of the Santa Clara Valley Water Authority. We file off the bus and start milling about waiting for direction.

There are a couple of folding tables set up end-to-end that are employed as backpack storage. Kid backpack storage in some cases. Just backpacks full of bag lunches and in one case a Cup O' Noodles (sounds Irish). Brilliant planning in that guy's case. Expecting a microwave or tea kettle, dude?

This dude in coveralls who is a spitting image of Scatman Crothers in The Shining rolls up to and addresses the crowd as the prison bus dashes out of the yard amidst more milling about by a couple of bulldozers. He lets this group of Noway Laureates know that they will be bagging sand for the rest of the day. Global warming. Drought. This sounded like make work work, but whatever, it's something to do to kill time.

The rules: teams of four will be on the hoppers dispensing sand into the bags. The winners behind them will tie the bags. The winners behind them will place them on palettes. Easy enough, right? Also, we will be issued safety glasses, gloves and respirators. Glasses and vests will be worn at all times even during breaks. There will be no use of outhouses outside of allotted break times.

I took 25% of the hopper crew and started filling bags and passing them behind me. It's actually a really good lat exercise that is not too unlike working with a Swiss ball. So, it was what it was and I really didn't mind it.

After about an hour I kind of caught one of the club kids staring at me every time I passed a bag back. Whatever. Maybe he knew me. I had noticed him on the bus because I didn't think he was properly dressed for work. Also, remember that you are never fully dressed without a smile. Pro tip.

So, there was a period of time that I was waiting for a sand refill in my hopper and dude goes, "So, how do you like it so far?"

"Dude, I fuckin' hate it. Are we supposed to like this?" and I went back to filling bags.

As the day went on dude kept making small conversation during any opportunity. The third conversation set my gaydar off. Well, that and the fact that dude was staring at my ass the whole fucking time. Well, whatever.

Lunch came and went with the rule that you could do whatever you want outside of going horizontal. No laying down.

After lunch I saw these dudes using their keys to slash the bags before passing to the palette guys so that the sand would spill out in the name of entertainment. This would make sense if you didn't have to fuckin' clean it up. This sums up the mentality of these people that were never going to graduate weekend work and who may not have wanted to. This was a peer group to some.

Day ends (sorta) and we clean up our stations and wait for the bus. We jump on the bus and get back to the freezing cold garage at three. We stand there for forty five minutes doing NOTHING. Like fucking nothing unless freezing can be considered a hobby.

The asshole cops line everyone up and do another roll call. I guess they occasionally lose people. They call my name and I walk across the garage to the other side and freeze some more while we wait for them to call everyone's name. Somewhere deep in the annals of public service this is considered a system. It explains a lot.

I get out and go home and sleep with visions of sand in my head. Piles and piles of sand. I imagine that the next day we are going to have to go take all the bags that we filled up and empty them out for the dudes to use the next weekend. Losing faith in the system as the whole thing is a huge fucking waste of time and benefits no one. Perhaps they should let me set up a new system for them, but I have a feeling this is a culture that is adverse to efficiency. It's called my own personal kryptonite.

SPOILER ALERT: I got CalTrans the next morning. More to come.