DECOMPRESSING

I finished my piece. That doesn't mean that it's done, though. I need to submit a picture of the piece by the 29th, and this is it. Hopefully the columns of my blog will be big enough to house the photo properly.



Right now, the working title is La Lluvia del Juarez-- "the rain of Juarez". Hey, it's my first painting and the subject matter is very serious, so much so that I might make the next thing I do something with some humor.

I won't add too much to it. I don't want to radically alter it anyway, since I'm sending a pic ahead. I'd say it's 90% done-- there's some details I'm going to change here and there.

Check out www.400portraits.com/art to see some of the works that will be at the UCLA Feminist Majority's auction on May 15th, 2005.

I feel like I'm coming out of a funk, shaking off the remnants of an active depression. There wasn't anything in particular that I was depressed about, but I did feel tightly wound a few times.

I like painting. As I learn more and get more comfortable with it, I think it may help me in unexpected ways.

This is my last night of doing the night shift-- next week I'm alive again, and not dead to the world, delirious.

I gave my cat some catnip today. He fucking lost his mind, rolling around like a crack fiend.

I have work to do but I don't want to do it. I'd better get to it.

If I don't blog again today, have a wonderful weekend.

MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH LUIS BUNUEL

When asked why he made movies, Luis Bunuel answered, "...to show that this is not the best of all possible worlds." Pondering this quote, I think of Voltaire's Candide, the satirization of proper society and manners, and the luxury of dream logic.

Humanities curriculum: Mr. Accardi, the Cleveland High School Art History instructor, screened Un Chien Andalou for a classroom full of egg-headed near-geniuses. I sat among them, as one of them, in the dark, entranced. The name of Salvador Dali rang a large bell between my ears. A razor blade slid against the rheumy curve of a woman's eyeball, slitting it in two, with a vision of the moon superimposed upon it. I made the connection between this iconic cinematic image and the lyrics to "Debaser" by The Pixies... my first Bunuelian epiphany.

As an adult in North Hollywood, barely an adult at least, pretending to be a man, I stayed up late one night as I was wont to do and saw The Exterminating Angel on PBS. Paulie and I were very stoned and he protested the movie because he didn't understand it. I didn't understand it either, but it was intriguing to watch, and the name Bunuel and the movement of Surrealism always opened doors in my consciousness whenever their syllables were pronounced. I came away from watching that movie with a deep impression left upon me. The party guests couldn't leave even if they tried, and when they finally made the break for it, they ended up in another cage...

Sherman Oaks--unlocked doors at night, isolation and space to breathe, free time squandered against the pursuit of leisure... My friend J from NYC asked me if I'd ever seen Belle Du Jour and when she mentioned Bunuel I jumped at the opportunity. Catherine Deneuve's face was positively beatific to behold, doleful sadness weeping from her lashes invisibly. The mysterious tinder box, the juxtapositions of the Belle's fantasy with reality, the man at the foot of the casket... I noticed that there was barely any music, and the action was slow but elegant. An enormously interesting film.

Yesterday I rented The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie from the library. I knew nothing about it except that it was Luis Bunuel, and the spine told me nothing other than cursory plot notes, the kind that serve only as departure points. Hilariously droll, refreshingly unimportant and yet making light of universal themes, despite the focus on six upper-class Europeans and their collective N-supply. Dreams within dreams beget realities within dreams and clash with objectivity... again, little or no music, and even more curious: deliberate obscuring of important dialogue, perhaps to keep the audience locked in the moment of watching a movie, the urgency of not being able to hear what is being heard, and in the credits I see that Bunuel mixed the sound effects himself... I can see why Hitchcock declared him his favorite film director. The colors, the pacing, the atmosphere, the sets, the actors toeing the line between playing it straight and straight-away playing. Stephane Audrane is gorgeous, urbane and witty in her role, a vacuous turn-on, the shallow arm of blistering beauty.

I still have to experience L'Age D'Or, That Obscure Object Of Desire and Tristiana, as well as other lesser-known films he made in his long career. I like the films of Luis Bunuel, because they are the kind of films that I wish I had the talent and guts to conceive, let alone create. They are unmistakably clever and affiliated with his Jester stance-- friendly pokes with sharp, steely daggers...

They all have subtitles.

DEAR SEX

An Advice Column That's Short On Advice And Long On Columns...

by DR. SEX!!!


DISCLAIMER: Dr. Sexton Seamus McGinty III is NOT, nor never was, a licensed physician, psychologist, or psychiatrist. He's a fucking quack is what he is. He is, in fact, a 'pataphysician, which is just a roundabout way of saying that he's a BULLSHITTER...


I'M BAAAAAACK!!

I bet you all thought you'd never get one of these again. But lately all of my bitches have been calling me out of retirement, asking me this and asking me that... one thing led to another, and now I'm back on the scene, doling out advice to the lovelorn, the sex-starved, and the crazy brave.

As you may have noticed, Ledhed's usual dirty illustrations do not accompany this column for now. He's on vacation in Europe, making a living drawing sketches of whatever he spies underneath the skirts of women walking on the street. The minute he comes back, he's going to be glad that the column is back in semi-regular rotation... and he'll also be bummed that he has to be back in the States at all!

Until he comes back, I'm writing these columns solo.

Enjoy.


Dear Sex:

What's the deal with circumcision? Are you for or against it?

Peter Schlong,
Perinuem, CA


Dear Peter:

The deal with circumcision is that, much like orgasms in the modern married couple's household, it comes and goes with the times. One minute, it's good to whack the extra skin off of a kid's wee-wee, and the next minute, people decide that kids need that extra skin in order to feel whole.

In my day, we had to de-smegmatize all by ourselves. My mother used to nag me about washing behind my ears and also underneath my foreskin. We didn't have doctors cutting the skin away for us as a convenience. Today's kids are nothing but a bunch of slackers, really. Lazy, unmotivated, needing everything done for them... no wonder this country's going down the toilet!

When it got popular to cut skins again, I volunteered as an adult to have the procedure done. I was in a tremendous amount of pain for two weeks after that-- I guess it's good to do it when you're young and stupid, kind of like getting a tattoo with your beloved's name on your ass.

After the pain subsided, I felt a whole lot better about it, because all of the pornos I watch feature circumcized penises and I like feeling like I'm part of the crowd.

The downside is that my penis is smaller and shorter than it was before the cut. Instead of being 5 and 3/4 inches long, it is now 5 and 1/2 inches long. This has affected my notions of manliness and masculinity. I've decided to have my foreskin restored, but first I need a donor. Anyone out there have an extra foreskin they don't need?


*/*


Dear Sex:

Why are men so obsessed with what a woman looks like? I see fine girls with ugly dudes all the time-- they all can't be gold-diggers though... it seems to me that women are less picky than men. If so, why do you think this is?

Hal Bellow
Upstate NY


Dear Hal:

Men are obsessed over a woman's appearance because men possess two sets of eyes. The first pair are used for things like seeing what's in front of you or stopping at a red traffic light; the second set are what my old friend Sharky used to refer to as his "dick eyes": they're used strictly for mentally undressing women out in public or anywhere else besides the bedroom.

The "dick eyes" are not in the same category as "beer goggles". Clearly, "beer goggles" are caused by drinking massive quantities of beer, whereas "dick eyes" are a natural occurrence in all men, regardless of sexual orientation.

When a man meets a woman, they look at her with their primary set of eyes. However, at some point during the meeting, the "dick eyes" start scanning the female form in order to find appealing aspects, i.e. large breasts, tight ass, long legs, etc. (it all varies depending on a man's particular fetish)

This can be traced back to the caveman days, where the survival instinct resulted in cavemen trying to find cavewomen who were fertile enough to reproduce offspring... unfortunately, the cavemen would eventually eat the young as soon as they were born. Thus, cavewomen had to start dressing in more revealing animal skins in order to keep the cavemen from eating their babies, which in turn led to the population explosion that we are experiencing today.

Mark my words: the minute child-eating comes back into vogue, men will be less inclined to judge women based upon their physical attributes. By that point, it will be all about how much salt they used in the recipe instead of how high a push-up bra can elevate the female breast. So ladies-- start boning up on your cooking skills. Going back into the kitchen is the only way to be a strong feminist nowadays.

There are those, however, who take a different tack-- groups of women are, on a daily basis, causing irreparable blindess to "dick eyes" by wearing clothes that they should never wear in public, on bodies that prove the nonexistance of a merciful God. This includes thongs on women who really shouldn't be wearing thongs in the first place.

I myself am not picky. I say, if you don't look like Brad Pitt and some girl thinks you are the bee's knees, you should be fucking happy and grateful that she has a pulse and all the other necessary parts.

Yes, women are less picky than men. But that works to everybody's detriment: ugly men take advantage of the kindness of women by giving average-looking men the false hope that they too can land a Claudia Schiffer lookalike, if only they just believed in themselves or had lots of money.

That's because a man who sees an ugly guy walking down the street hand-in-hand with a fine piece of ass is looking at the man with his normal eyes, while he is looking at the woman with his "dick eyes"... that is, unless he's gay or bi.

If you are interested in combatting what we professionals refer to as Dick Eyes Abuse, please send a SASE to: Ladies Against Dick Eyes (L.A.D.E.) c/o Sex McGinty, 2222 Twin Oaks Way, Pacoima, CA 91331. Send $5 with that SASE-- you won't get anything back, I just want to make some cash off of this.

Okay, that's enough for today. I don't know when I'll be back again. Possibly wherever it is that people cry for sound medical advice... I'll be there to steer them the wrong way!

PEACE

THE CULT OF N

N.

I'm sick of writing out the word "narcissism" or "narcissist". Too many esses and eyes. I never know if it should be capitalized or not.

If I'm going to bleed this sucker dry, milk it for all it's worth... then I need to go shorthand.

N.

Capital n. From now on, it's all about N.

N is everywhere, in this country. N is especially prevalent on your TV.

TV gives you a POV full of N. After a while, you can see how everything in the media, popular culture and public affairs is affected by N.

I was watching Oliver Stone's The Doors on VHS. I used to be a great big fan of Jim Morrison, until I saw this movie. It was rated 'R', and I was 16 or 17 when I first saw it. Seeing Stone's interpretation of the life of an interesting rock performer was a travesty, because it said nothing to me about Morrison's life, or my own life for that matter. It spoke volumes about Stone's life, however, and so it qualifies as N.

Jim Morrison was an N, for sure. What I thought were attractive qualities in the man turned out to be my juvenile fascination with his all-encompassing N.

I watched Mighty Aphrodite for the first time earlier today. It's one of Woody Allen's best, but he's an N also. His movies are ripe with N. That's why so many people dislike his movies-- because they're all about him and his little world.

Seinfeld owes a lot to Woody Allen in its exploration of the N in four different New York individuals. Jerry Seinfeld is an N but he's a gracious N-- the show was named after him and yet he was always willing to let his co-stars share the spotlight... because they were under his name! And NBC, well... they have N in their acronym.

N is in all things. But N is running rampant in your mirror.

Go take a look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see? Do you see yourself? No, you don't.

You're seeing N.

You're seeing what you want to see. You're ignoring the things that lower your N-supply: the love handles, the blemishes, the crow's feet, the open pores, all of it...

You stay focused on the things you like: the way your nose curves at the tip, the slight bags under the eyes that give it a world-weariness that you couldn't buy for all the money in the world, the arch of your upper lip...

Long live N. I'm taking it to the Nth degree, and running with it.


*/*


The painting is coming along swimmingly. I did half an hour today and I forsee that I'll be done, at this rate, by week's end. After that, I have this screwy notion of starting a series of portraits. All of the subjects will be women I have either dated, loved, or been loved by, and I will title it my "muse" series....

This is tricky territory, you know. I have to appeal to a woman's sense of N-supply, and that can take a long long time. A woman's vanity is a prized possession. I must be careful about how I go about it, and also I must keep the paintings under wraps until each one is done-- I don't want people claiming favorites or anything like that.

Most of all, I have to capture the essence of each woman in a way that doesn't condescend or offend. It's going to be tough, but also I imagine it will be fun, and even therapeutic for me.

If anyone out there paints or wants to take it up, I highly recommend listening to jazz when you do it. I played the Miles Davis/Bill Laswell CD again as I started on the second phase of the painting, and it is really inspirational to me. It helps me to establish a mood. I will try out The Best Of John Coltrane on my next painting, or maybe towards the end of this one, when I'm retouching and adding details. Painting a picture to the sounds of "Naima" or "Equinox" will be a treat, to say the least. I used to have a copy of A Love Supreme on CD but, in a fit of anti-jazz obsession late last year, I sold it.

I know this sounds pretentious and pompous, but for the first time in my life, I feel like a real artist. I have the easel up in a space in the corner of my apartment, with a large dirty sheet covering the carpet and brushes strewn about; I have paintngs from artist-friends on the walls; I have the weed stash on the coffee table next to the glass bubbler and I have very little food in my fridge; I have an electric guitar in the corner and a picture of Earvin "Magic" Johnson on one of my living room walls; I have rows of books in my bookcases and a line of vinyl records on display...

I don't want to glamorize the hand-to-mouth living and the slight seediness, but at the same time it seems to go well with the whole vibe. I realize that part of me is living out some weird sort of fantasy where I struggle to make ends meet while also living under the radar and existing in a Los Angeles of my own creation, but it isn't delusional. I understand that my life is getting stabler, even as it seems to have the chaos that I thrive on...

I just want to look back on this time in my life, ten years from now, and throw my fist in the air and nod my head and say, "Yeah... now that was living!" I look back on those reckless days in North Hollywood, with Paulie as a roommate and scores of musicians, patrons and passerbys paying visits to our slummy apartment, and I marvel over the daily adventures that went down. It was exciting, and I guess I want that excitement to sustain itself somehow, even if it's on an infinitely smaller scale...

I think part of my enchantment at my current predicament has to do with being proud of where I've come from in the last two or three years. Going from being on my own to down-and-out and back on my own again has done wonders for my self-esteem. I am in love with life again, and art has been instrumental in this personal renaissance.

So, I will get back to work now, and then I will go home and sleep it all off, and awaken and paint, and then go out to The Garage and work, and then go home and nap until it's time to work again, and in-between I'll be daydreaming, like I always do...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

Your Brain is 46.67% Female, 53.33% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

Just as I always suspected...

PEACE

PAINTING

On Sunday, April 24th, at 3:18 PM, I painted.

This is my first real painting. I did stuff for my Humanities classes in high school, and I did artwork for some cash here and there when high school let out... but that's it.

I've had the paints, the brushes, and the palette for about two weeks. I've had the easel and canvases for months. Yesterday, I finally had the time.

I set the mood, made it ritualistic. I smoked some marijuana and then smoked a cigarette, to induce the Gods of Smoke. Then, I played this CD of Miles Davis' jazz-rock fusion as remixed by Bill Laswell, Panthalassa, and prepared the two colors I was going to work with: Black and Fleshtone.

The paint is cheap acrylic shit. I diluted some of it with water. I started with the two biggest brushes, to get the broadstrokes out of the way.

I forget how big the canvas size actually is-- I'd say it's an average size for a canvas, not too big and not too small. Specific measurements elude me-- once I removed the plastic wrapper, I didn't look back.

It was exhilirating. It was like music, especially as I was listening to Miles. The rhythms, the nuances, the strokes... like making love, like getting high, like laughing until you cry real tears... all of those pleasurable things...

I got ahead of myself, painting over shapes that hadn't dried yet. I stopped after twenty minutes, because I'd gotten further than I expected. I work very quickly, and I underestimated my speed. I am more than halfway done, with just the two colors I put down.

I had an idea of a disembodied woman's face, blindfolded, tears streaming down onto a desert landscape, pink crosses enclosed within each teardrop as they decorate the sand. The theme of this is painting is the women of Juarez, Mexico, who have been murdered and their bodies left to rot out in the open. Pink crosses are erected at the site of each body, now totaling over 400.

I have to pace myself. It feels good to explore this medium-- I have a lot to learn and yet I feel like I am a natural. It was special. It was magical.

I am working the night shift for one week, so when I get home, I will paint, then sleep, then paint again, then sleep again, every day this week until Friday, when I submit a digital picture of the work to the UCLA Feminist Majority... they need to approve my work for the auction to raise funds for a Juarez rape crisis center.

Wish me luck. There is the possibility that my very first work will be purchased, with the money going to a good cause. If that happens, then a goal will be met and I will be happy. Where it takes me from there is anyone's guess, but I think I'll stick with it.

Anyway, I will most likely blog later, but right now I'm just killing time until my shift actually starts. I just wanted to announce that I started painting, and so far I like it.

PS: This link will end up being incorporated into Chapter Six of the online novel. It's right up that alley...

"THE COUNCIL MEETING" (work in progress, chapter five)

There was nothing remarkable about the boardroom in the slightest. It was plainly adorned, with nothing except for some generic-looking still lifes mounted to the walls. The long table with accompanying chairs spoke to no particular style, and the view outside of the room gave no spectacular vistas to behold.

Even less remarkable were the men in black suits who filed into the boardroom and sat down. Although they were all of different races and ages, they were all nondescript men with nothing else to set them apart. Some wore glasses, some had their hair slicked back like Pat Riley in his Lakers-coaching days, and some of them wore their standard-issue black suits uncomfortably.

As they sat, Fabian Rourke entered the room, dressed in pinstripe grey, standing out decidedly from the rest. He sat at the head of the boardroom table with a briefcase that he opened on the tabletop.

After perusing through some papers, he shushed the murmurs of the other men and proceeded to begin the meeting.

"Thank you all for making it out here. As you all know, it's the end of the second quarter and the shareholders are anxious to hear the quarter-end reports. I'm going to skip the minutes from the last meeting-- you know, I never got that whole 'minutes' thing to begin with. I mean, I know why it's done, but why call it 'minutes'? Why not call it 'all the shit we talked about last time?'"

The rest of the men laughed freely. Fabian's youthful vigor and sense of humor often kept the Council meetings from divebombing into banality.

"We'll start from the bottom this time around. Nimbus, what you got?"

Mr. Nimbus began to speak nervously. An expert in his field, he was nonetheless ill-equipped for public speaking.

"Ah, yes, well, the pop cultural barometer has been, uh, swinging... in quite healthy ways. After the Trial Of The Century took people's minds off of current events such as Rwanda and Kosovo and Bosnia, I instructed my staff to focus on more celebrity trials... it, uh, seems that we've hit some sort of jackpot in that area, because as all of us here know, celebrities are-- on the whole-- dirtier and more decadent than normal folk. This can, er, be attributed to the special privileges that Council Corps affords them. No doubt Mr. Latham--" Nimbus motioned to the man seated to his right --"will brief us properly on that when his turn comes up... but as far as I'm concerned pop cultural affairs are swiftly moving towards a greater divide between our, um, agents, and the other side. We have training programs, um, in effect at the moment to breed new cultural icons in the near future. Depending on, er, whoever takes over the White House in 2000, we have a slew of agents-in-waiting, fully unaware of their purpose until it's, um, trigger time. Council Corps sponsors these up-and-comers, of course, but we are never sure whether we're going to be working for Red or Blue, so we... we cultivate potential operatives for either side. It's a way of, uh, hedging our bets, so to speak..."

Nimbus fumbled with papers and coughed and seemed completely unprofessional, but this didn't faze Fabian Rourke.

"Good work, Nimbus. Latham-- hit me with your report."

Mr. Latham, in contrast with Mr. Nimbus, was cool, calm and collected.

"As Nimbus pointed out, my division keeps the world's powerful people-- the rich, the famous, the influential --in check by doing what the CIA and FBI used to do, before the work was outsourced to Council Corps. For example, we have Gates in our pocket, for sure, thanks to information that we gathered on him a while ago. If he knows what's good for him, he's with us. But we had a slight breach recently, no thanks to this whole Lewinsky thing... why she is playing for the other side is still unclear, and most likely she was merely sloppy as opposed to treacherous... I think Tripp's tape recordings made it hard for us to send out discreditors."

Fabian asked Latham, "Is Tripp from the other side?"

Latham replied, "As far as I know, Mr. McGinty, no. I have my men looking into it. Nimbus and I have been working an angle in the press, though-- I mean, have you seen what this Tripp looks like? She looks like a fat man in drag. Totally unappealing."

Chuckles in the boardroom abounded.

"Luckily, Nimbus' people are developing Operation Makeover for future implementation, and she won't be able to benefit from that because it's our territory. Paula Jones taught us a lesson-- never let them reinvent themselves. I mean, Jones was still dog-ugly after all the work, but now that we have the plastic surgery industry in our camp, Tripp won't be able to get out from under the campaign we have ready for her."

"Can we get her to stay on our side?"

"No, Mr. McGinty. I don't think she can be trusted."

"Obviously, neither can Lewinsky, and she was with us," Fabian replied.

Latham furrowed his brow. "I wonder about that, sir."

"You think she was a double?"

"Possibly. I'll let Strindberg fill you in on that. But as far as my report goes, we are keeping an inventory on all of our blackmail materials. Video technology has allowed us to gather more and more incriminating evidence against people who know too much, or just people with big mouths. The great thing, though, is that most of the surveiilance we do is voluntary-- thanks to Nimbus' campaigns, Americans are becoming more and more vain. Thus, they videotape themselves doing the most insane things-- illicit things. Sex with underage girls, drug dealing, murder even... we don't have to send spooks out into the field. All we have to do is send plumbers. Thieves. Burglars. It's as if these people want to be put into compromising positions-- they're doing half of the work for us!"

Fabian Rourke laughed. "As Mr. Burns would say, excellent!"

Latham laughed, being a Simpsons fan himself. "Thank you, Mr. McGinty."

"Okay," Fabian continued. "Next, politics. That's you, Strindberg."

Strindberg stood up to deliver his report. "First of all, Lewinsky was not a double agent. I can verify this with the following briefs, of which I took the liberty of making copies for all of us to look over. " Strindberg passed stapled Xeroxes of the briefs to everyone else in the boardroom. "Unfortunately --and this is no disrespect to you, Mr. Nimbus, because I admire your work and have seen its effectiveness --unfortunately Lewinsky can be considered an example of Nimbus' campaigns being too successful."

"How do you mean?" Nimbus asked, out of turn and with a tinge of hurt.

"Well, in Lewinsky we have the perfect Narcissist: a woman who was so self-absorbed and centered upon herself that issues of national security went out the window when it came time to fulfill her fantasies... fantasies that are a direct result of Operation Vanity and all of your work, Nimbus. Like I said, it's not meant as a dig... if anything, it means you're just too damn good at what you do."

"I don't take it as an insult, Mr. Strindberg," Nimbus replied. "But it scares me to think that a breach of this magnitude can, er, derail our progress. It's counterproductive. But, I'm glad you are bringing it to my attention, at least... now we can work on, um, ironing out the kinks. I apologize if I seemed a tad, I dunno, upset."

"And I apologize for coming off accusatory," Strindberg remarked.

"Okay, enough of the niceness," Fabian said. "Continue, Mr. Strindberg."

"Thank you, Mr. McGinty. Now, if you look at Lewinsky's psychological profile, which is on page 22, you'll see that the young lady has a predilection for men in power. Coupled with what is commonly referred to as 'daddy issues', we have a woman who saw an opportunity to achieve a pure narcissistic state... unconsciously, of course. All of our work is done on subliminal levels, so Lewinsky is just as confused as to why she did what she did as anyone else. People in these situations chalk it up to 'passion' or 'emotion' but since we here at Council Corps have empirically proven that there are no such things as emotions and passions, we can only conclude that it was a reaction to our own technology. Lewinsky is a Frankenstein monster, if you will, a creation that turned on its creators... only she doesn't know that she turned on her creators."

"Interesting," Fabian Rourke said, his hand scratching his chin. "What is the likelihood of this happening again?"

"Mr. Yoyo can take over on this point," Strindberg said, as he sat down.

The mere mention of Mr. Yoyo's name made the entire room go silent. The stocky Asian man, who sat quietly as the others waited to hear his report, let the silence ring out for a good deal of time, until Fabian Rourke had to prompt him to speak.

"Mr. Yoyo, we're waiting."

"You will not like my report, Mr. McGinty."

Fabian Rourke did not smile. For the first time since the beginning of the meeting, he was angry. Mr. Yoyo evoked strong feelings in people, and Fabian knew that, even though Yoyo was allied with Council Corps and everything they stood for, to trust Mr. Yoyo completely could be disastrous for all involved.

Plus, even though he didn't mind being called "McGinty" by his unsuspecting staff, there was something about the way Mr. Yoyo said it... as if he knew that it wasn't Fabian's real name.

"Try me," Fabian said to Mr. Yoyo.

Yoyo sighed. Then, he reclined in his chair, his fingers bridging each other, and began to speak.

"The likelihood of something akin to the Lewinsky affair happening again is very high. This is not a reflection on your work, Mr. McGinty, nor is it a reflection upon the work of your intelligent and industrious staff. Council Corps has succeeded in its goal for over three decades thanks to people like us, who know that out of chaos there must be order. We set the standards, we organize the folders, we keep the numbers level... but I have always thoroughly rejected the science behind your assertion, Mr. Strindberg, that emotions are nonexistant. I reject it because I believe in chaos-- that is why I head the Mayhem Division. It is a dirty job, and I am well-suited to implement its policies. And in my line of work, there are a few things that I have learned.

"One of those things is: you cannot underestimate human incompetence. It is incompetence that makes the world go 'round, not efficiency, not progress, not order. Although I agree that we as a corporation must keep the reins of power firmly in our hands, I do not agree that human error can be eliminated. That is the reasoning that the other side holds dear to, and look what it has done for them-- nothing. Their victories over us are miniscule compared with their errors. Likewise, our minor triumphs over their forces only keep us from acknowledging the one absolute truth that binds all things together."

Fabian, exasperated, asked, "And what is that truth, Mr. Yoyo?"

Yoyo smiled as he answered. "It is this: The more things change, the more they stay the same. And if we continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we can change the course of humanity, through mind control, through media manipulation, through lies and deceit, then we are no better than the sheep that we herd daily through their mundane lives. We must avoid falling prey to the very vices we accuse the masses of indulging in. Maybe Nimbus' vanity campaigns are taking a toll on us as well as on their intended targets."

Nimbus became outraged and screamed, "Yoyo, you're full of shit!"

A clamor arose in the boardroom. Murmurs and mumbles filled the air. Finally, Fabian "McGinty" Rourke calmed everyone down and began to speak.

"Okay, okay, okay... Enough. Now, listen here. Yoyo, don't you think those thoughts haven't crossed my mind? Don't you think that I havent contemplated that line of logic when I was working my way up through Council training? I am not ignorant to the dangers of our work. Maybe in Tokyo they do things differently, but over here, we have to toe the line and work with what produces results. Nimbus' work is far from perfect, Yoyo, but he gets results. If we are to create a completely narcissistic society by the end of this millenium, if we are to reach our goal before the other side makes a play, if we are to reach our destination in order to subvert all of the other ogranizations out there who want to throw their hats into the World Domination ring, then we have to keep our focus. We're not doing this because we are power-mad, Yoyo. We are doing this because people out there in the real world don't know any better! They make horrible decisions based upon their desires... they have thrown logic out of the window and are strangers to consequence. The collective IQ of the United States alone is pathetically low, and so we have a lot of work to do. We need to reintegrate the world into a new society that they won't be able to transit into unless we supply the psychological cocoons necessary to soften the blows."

"I understand, sir." Mr. Yoyo's face betrayed no sign of what he was thinking.

"I hope you do," Fabian continued. "As a Mover, your job is far more field-orientated. You take big risks constantly, and I know that it is more stressful than any other post here, save my own. But I need you to do me a favor and get that notion out of your head. It won't help you in this line of work. In fact, it will hold you back-- it will handicap you. I don't need someone making moves for me who thinks it's a fruitless affair. You can't carry out assassinations or bring down puppet governments while thinking that way, Yoyo."

Fabian wiped his brow. Then, he smiled again.

"Is that your report?"

Yoyo said, "I wasn't done. I apologize for digressing."

"Well, finish up."

"Certainly. The main thing I have to report is that there is much uprising in the Arab community, specifically the radical Muslims who see America and the West as 'infidels'. Something is being planned, that I can tell you. An act of terrorism, perhaps."

"On par with Oklahoma?" Fabian asked.

"Bigger," Yoyo replied. "Harsher. It is bound to change the game 100%. We might not know where we stand if the Arabs make their move."

Fabian turned to a man named Simon who sat to his left. "Simon, what's the military lowdown?"

"Yoyo's telling the truth. However, we are in the dark. We're thinking it may be another attempt on the Twin Towers..."

"Yeah, that worked out real well," a man named Corsair said aloud. Everyone except for Fabian laughed.

"We got lucky with that one," Fabian noted. Simon nodded his head in agreement and continued to give his report.

"Indeed, we did. Our ties to the feds & the spooks were stronger back then. Nowadays, the military is reluctant to work with anyone because of what President Clinton has done to the military budget. Luckily, Council Corps isn't seen or viewed as being partisan in any way. That's what's kept us alive for the past ten years or so."

"Are the Arabs in cahoots with the other side?"

"No, they're in it for themselves. But you can thank the other side for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the first place-- remember how we said Lewinsky is our Frankenstein monster? Well, terrorist groups like The Core are the Frankensteins of the other side. They are the results of their intervention into places like Iran and Afghanistan, the offspring of the drug routes in Pakistan. They are more likely to bite the other side's hand than ours. In fact, the Twin Towers bombing was supposed to happen on Bush's watch, not Clinton's, but they were a little behind schedule and at the time they saw no difference between the two camps..."

"There is no difference," Mr. Yoyo chimed in.

Simon, annoyed by that outburst, replied, "Yeah, well, we know that. Thankfully, the average citizen doesn't."

Fabian smirked. "This is one regard where I will sort-of agree with Yoyo, people. Keep in mind always-- there are no party sides. Don't get wrapped up in thinking that the other side is that much different from us. Only in tactics do they differ-- they prefer to treat the masses as inanimate objects, subjecting them to soul-crushing experiences as opposed to redirection. The other side props up morality and religion and values but it's just a charade. They want the same thing as we do. As for the radical Arabs, they actually believe the Qu'ran and all that shit. That's what they want-- to set mankind back a thousand years. It just won't work."

"So what do we do?" Nimbus asked.

After a pause, Fabian Rourke said, "We turn up the ratchet, that's what we do."

Fabian's staff concurred. "Yes, Mr. McGinty," they all said in unison.


CHAPTER SIX COMES NEXT WEEK...

THE NEW SOCIETY

Let's say the world was going to come to an end soon.

Is there something wrong with that?

Is there something wrong with nuclear annihilation, the megadeaths of billions upon millions of human beings, and the destruction of everything we, as a race of beings, have worked on so hard for the past who-knows-how-long?

I wouldn't be sad.

For one thing, knowing my luck, I'd survive a nuclear holocaust. I'd mutate, thanks to fallout, into a three-armed, six testicled, five penis-having supermonster whose only role in the New Society is to procreate and spread his seed in order to rebuild the population of the world.

What a world it would be: all of the world's population would be my sires. I would be like Adam, in a weird, psychedelic Garden of Eden, where I'd name the animals according to my own whims (and also according to how they mutated)-- you don't wanna know what I'd name them. You think Ligers and Wolphins are odd? Just you wait until the end of the world...

Who would be my Eve? Any woman whose uterus is still functioning... possibly a mutated uber-uterus that can incubate up to a dozen eggs at a time.

The first order of business, after repopulating the earth, would be to go to Washington D.C. or Camp David or wherever it is that the leaders of the world hid out to save their sorry asses... and kill them with my army of mutated babies.

Any Secret Service men still around would be no match against my horde of bloodthirsty, cannibalistic spawn, all of whom would answer to me and only me, their Father, their fearless, three-armed leader. I'd castrate George W. Bundy and incinerate his scrotal baggage to ensure that his reptilian ancestry never gets passed on to the New Society that will arise out of the ashes of the Old World.

All of my subsequent writings ('cause you know that, with three arms, I'd be writing a lot more than I do right now) would be compiled in a book that would replace The Bible as the spiritual guide for all of humanity... except I would put a disclaimer at the beginning that would state that nothing contained within its bindings should be taken seriously.

I say all of this because I woke this morning from a beautiful dream where I met and fell in love with a kind-hearted porn star who loved me for who I am... only to hear the babblings and trappings of people stricken with fear.

I watched TV and recoiled in disgust at the notion of global idolatry, evident in the obsessive coverage of Pope Benedict XVI.

I browsed online and read up on prophecies and predictions for the end of the world from people who don't seem to realize that the end of the world has been coming since long before I was even born.

I recall all the Y2K hysteria about a pentad ago... very rational and sensible people bought into that horseshit. I didn't.

I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household, where concepts like the Book of Revelations and the Rapture all got equal play. I have yet to see what it all means.

Yes, it may seem like the world is going to hell in a handbasket right now, but just you wait...

Fox News Channel will change their tune.

The Bush family will go away, hopefully forever.

The world will not end, unless it's in the manner I described above.

People will be less afraid.

That paradigm shift in 2012? It will be postponed by the same astrologers and magicians who said that the world will end in 1997.

I will live to be 99 years old, and I will laugh at all of you for being so afraid of the very real notion of a little radioactivity and lawlessness in the wake of World War III.

Fuck World War III-- I'm afraid of World War VI, because I will be too old and conservative to care at that point.

Right now, I'm young, and I want to fuck and smoke and drink and party and live and work and fall in love and love back and all of that....

I ain't got time to think about the end of the world.

Besides, it's not the end of THE world that we fear-- it's the end of OUR PERSONAL worlds that we are so adamant against.

We are afraid that, in the post-apocalyptic landscape, there won't be any TiVo, or ATM machines, or even a simple dial-up service for your by-then obsolete laptop.

I am looking forward to mankind stepping backwards, regressing to a time when things were harder, more dangerous, less certain...

It would be a fitting end to a disastrous attempt, on our parts, to prove to the other intelligent life forms in the Universe that we deserve to know the answers to the questions of all existence.

Wouldn't it?

I'm in a rare mood today: happy and yet totally giving in to my sardonic impulses.

btw: I made up a music page. Here's the URL-- www.myspace.com/nsupply...

These are my own songs. No one else helped me with them, and no one else seems to care at this point. Enjoy.

PS: Take a look at this... hopefully it'll make you chuckle, if it plays for you.

THE FOOL'S SECTION

My friend J from NYC sent me a link to a page that contains the entire Straight Outta Compton album by N.W.A., edited to include only the explicit content.

It's fucking funny.

And it made me realize that, after years of learning how to edit audio digitally, I can do something like what that link has done in a snap. In fact, I used to do things like that all the time, when I was a kid with a stereo that had two cassette players.

I had an early model that allowed both tapes to play simultaneously. Later models allowed only one tape at a time to play, but I made good use of the early model's anomaly and learned how to edit tape-to-tape.

Nowadays, programs like Wavelab make editing a breeze. I may be doing some sonic experiments of my own soon.

In the meantime, I have four original songs ready to post onto a My Space page. I mixed these songs down as part of a snail mail package that I'm sending to my latest pen pal. I suppose they are strong enough to put online but first I have to wait on hearing back from the Library of Congress regarding my copyright applications.

Lately, maybe due to being older and remembering things I'd forgotten about long ago, I've been waxing nostalgic... but not for pop cultural artifacts.

I am thinking about grade school and junior high, and the radio skits me and my friend Mike Kelly used to make up, at my house or on the school bus. I recall that our school bus route was full of fun and games, fighting with the Mexicans who sat up front, impersonating teachers and quoting Monty Python, making parody songs about girls' breasts (or lack of), writing dirty slogans on pieces of notebook paper and holding them up to the bus window for passing cars to view, sneaking people on the bus who didn't have transfer slips, singing choruses of "Bang Bang Rosie" until our throats bled, quoting from any Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movie that we could, re-enacting Cheech & Chong routines, doing impressions of classmates we disliked, playing Truth or Dare, listening to taped copies of Dr. Demento's radio show, reciting the words to "Weird Al" songs, playing 2 Live Crew for my white suburban friends for the first time, and generally just acting like the dorky Magnet school kids that we were...

Those days didn't suck. Those days made me who I am. I sharpened my wit with those kids. I drew cartoons to impress them. We wrote songs not because we were musicians but because we wanted to be funny. We were trying to make each other laugh and were willing to outdo each other if we had to, and it was all fun.

I still giggle at all the in-jokes: our Biology teacher's impossible accent, the idiocy of some of our fellow students, lines from movies reappropriated as double entendres, what it would sound like if so-and-so and what's-his-face had sex... we took each joke to its illogical extreme. The sillier it was, the better.

They say that we'll never have days like that again, but I tend to disagree. If you have good friends and if they have great senses of humor, you can keep that magic alive even as your hairline recedes and you get old and go gray. Laughter is so important, especially nowadays where people have little to laugh about.

I don't care for a high school reunion, but I would love to see my friends from junior high school again. They were funny people. It was the time before my parents divorced, before I found out about Reality, before I discovered that things were not always as they seemed on the surface... the laughs were genuine.

And every attempt at laughter from those days on has been an effort on my part to get back to that point in the past, where we were delirious from the hilarity, from our collective ability to be funny and silly and absolutely retarded.

I think that's why, in high school, I strayed away from the pseudo-intellectuals and fell in with the Theater Arts crowd. They were just like those kids on my junior high school bus route: full of jokes, looking for laughs, performing for their friends, unafraid to be silly and foolish. I grew bored with the cynical kids, with their hypercritical outlook on all things cool, who could never fathom shedding their carefully crafted images for one second, lest they risk looking ridiculous.

I have no need to be around people who are too afraid of looking uncool to express their hearts. Lead me to the Fool's Section, where we can dine sumptuously and sip from the Cup of Laughter, with a feast large enough to feed a starving world...

A QUIZ

I found this on Ayelet's blog:

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English

20% Dixie

20% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

NON-SEQUITIRS

My cat Otis is a mellow, fun-loving cat. Male cats are very affectionate, but Otis is a straight-up attention-whore. Anyone who has ever met him, especially females, know how flirtatious and touchy-feely he is.

Well, for the past week and a half he's had a guest in our home: his sister, Jenny.

Jenny is my friend Beth's cat, and it was Beth who gave Otis to me so many years ago. Jenny saved Otis recently by donating blood for his transfusion, and they lived together at Beth's apartment for over a year when I was living with my family-- none of my family members wanted to take my well-behaved and adorable cat in, so I had to lodge him with Beth and Jenny until I had my own place.

Anyway, the first three days Jenny stayed in my closet, hiding out, as cats are wont to do. Otis would try and see her but she would hiss and scare him away.

I remember one time, when I lived in Sherman Oaks. Beth brought Jenny by my apartment to visit. Otis and Jenny hissed at each other at first, but after about ten minutes Otis warmed up to her. He pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper and pawed at it in front of her, inviting her to play with him. She didn't bite-- she was too skittish about not being on her home turf.

When Beth left with Jenny, my poor little Otis ran all over the apartment, looking for her.

He's such a lover.

When he lived with her, he was okay with it. The only problem was that Beth's roommate at the time was my ex, Amy Coates. And Amy had an awful, ugly, overweight cat named Puppy who was disagreeable to say the least. Otis and Jenny had to team up in order to deal with Puppy's tyranny.

My theory here is that cats are very much like their owners.

The other day I came home and saw that Jenny was now out of the closet and socializing with Otis. He has been a gracious host, and he really cares about his sister. I caught him licking the top of her head as she slept one night-- it was too cute for words.

Still, Jenny is not comfortable being away from home-- the only reason why she is with me is because Beth had to move, and didn't want Jenny freaked out over the move until everything was settled. Tonight, Beth is coming over to pick Jenny up, so I will no longer have to watch over her.

Jenny and Otis had it out this morning, because Otis loves her so much that he forgets about respecting the personal space of others. He gets in her face with good intentions, and she gets mad and shoos him away.

And that, for all intents and purposes, is how I am, as a man: I get too close, I make the girls freak out and get hissy, because I don't know my own limits and I tend to be intrusive without thinking about how people will react.

Poor little Otis is going to miss her, I know it. Tonight and for the rest of this week I'm going to have to show him extra attention, show him more love than I normally do. The little guy just doesn't understand that, sometimes, other beings (myself included) need some time by ourselves. I find myself shooing him away often, when I'm trying to read or play music, and I hate it because I really love the furball but he gets in my way often.

He can't help it-- he has a lot of love to give.


*/*


I've been thinking about different types of narcissistic personalities. I find that there are two notable extremes: that of the practical joker, and that of the serial killer.

On the one hand, you have people like Hugh Troy, a famous practical joker who attended Cornell in the '30's and is a legend for his elaborate pranks and jokes. He would do things like purchasing a park bench from the city, then wait for a policeman to walk by as he and his friends would pick up the bench, in a park or on the street, and walk away with it. When detained by the cops, he would wait until the right moment to produce the receipt, which would exonerate him and make the Jakes feel dumb.

A classmate of his owned a wastebasket made from the foot of a rhinoceros. The classmate was throwing it out, but Troy asked to keep it. During the snowy season, he stayed out all night, leaving rhino tracks in the snow leading to a hole in an icy pond. The next morning, scientists were dispatched to investigate the tracks, and when it was revealed that they belonged to a rhinoceros, people started to complain about their water tasting like rhino.

His most famous (or infamous) prank involved setting up an exhibit of his own at a museum in New York which was debuting the works of Van Gogh for the first time in America. His exhibit: a piece of dried meat in a wooden box, with the caption "This is the ear that Vincent Van Gogh cut off and sent to his mistress" or something to that effect. Crowds of art patrons gathered luridly around the exhibit, which was proved to be a hoax within days.

That last one is reminiscent of some recent jokers who have placed their own works of art in museums as of late. The value of that prank never seems to get old, and in a way it is a work of art unto itself.

From Alfred Jarry to Andy Kaufman, artists and performers have straddled the line between their art being a joke and their jokes being an art. What makes Hugh Troy notable is that his jokes, while sometimes having a sobering effect, seemed only to perpetuate the myth about himself that had grown with each prank. The practical joker, in his attempts to show the hypocrisy and absurdity of modern life, has to constantly outdo himself, and in a manner that is unexpected. If the joke is easily attributed to the person who perpetrated it, the value lessens. There is a constant need to take things to the next level, to the furthest extreme.

This points to a personality at odds with society, an anti-social personality. The jokes are friendly manifestations of this need to be outside of society's norms and expectations. Surely, Hugh Troy felt no pride more rewarding than pulling the wool over the eyes of people who normally garner respect and admiration from the rest of society. It was his way of thumbing his nose at what he perceived as injustices and biases in the world.

Never is this more evident than in one of Hugh's better pranks. He was studying art at Cornell and was invited, along with other artists, to attend a swanky party held for the stinking rich and town elite. The hostess of the show wanted the artists to create works right there on the spot-- she even provided canvases and paints. But her condescending attitude irked Troy, who decided to add some spice to the formal proceedings by painting, in big block letters on the largest available canvases, signs that read "WELCOME TO THE CARNIVAL! FREE RIDES! BRING THE KIDDIES! FREE DRINKS FOR ALL! PICNIC PARTIES WELCOME!"

One of my favorite punk rock singers, Jello Biafra, once said, "Anyone who doesn't use art as a weapon is not an artist." I agree with this assessment, and apparently Hugh Troy would've concurred.


*/*


On the other hand, you have the narcissistic tendencies of the serial killer. A good example of this type of personality is Theodore "Ted" Bundy.

I was watching A&E Biography last week, where the emphasis was on serial killers. They profiled Jeffrey Dahmer, who was a curious sort of serial killer in that no one knows exactly what drove him to cannibalize his victims. It's hard to put him through the narcissistic lens because he avoided the limelight most of the time. In fact, it was Dahmer's lack of an ego-driven personality that allowed him to get away with his heinous crimes. He was close to being caught a couple of times and got away with it, not by virtue of his outward charm but because he didn't seem like he could hurt a fly.

The well-known tale of how one of Dahmer's victims escaped and went to the cops, who were convinced by Dahmer himself that it was a bout of rough gay sex that got out of hand, is less a study of a deceitful mind at work than it is an indictment of the cops, who wrote it off mostly because the victim was Filipino and barely spoke coherent English. Had Dahmer chosen an articulate victim, maybe the cops would've seen through the story and investigated it. But if it seemed like a gay lover's spat, the police probably felt it wasn't worth their time.

On the contrary side is Ted Bundy, a good-looking, well-spoken, politically active college student who aspired to be a lawyer. It was all a mask that Bundy projected to hide his insecurities. As a boy, he had a stutter and was abnormally shy. In the Biography segment, it is said that Bundy's first victim was a preteen girl who lived down the block from him. The fact that the teenage Bundy was never suspected of this crime must have had some type of effect on him, possibly causing him to believe that he could get away with murder.

As he grew older, he experienced mature relationships with attractive women and outgrew his shyness. This was part of his reinvention as he entered college, but no amount of making over could undo the damage in his mind. To make matters worse, he discovered the truth about his family: the woman he had thought was his sister for all of his young life turned out to be his birth mother, and his parents were really his grandparents.

(It bears noting that Jack Nicholson, a celebrity who has had reportedly violent brushes with women as well as deserved fame and fortune, underwent the same discovery in his own family at a formative age... and I think it's safe to say that Jack, as cool as he is, qualifies as a narcissist of the highest order)

Such a violation of the fragile sense of identity that Bundy possessed no doubt caused him to go crazy and start killing women, especially after the first woman he ever loved dumped him. She was one of his first adult victims, and the physical description of almost all of his subsequent victims were similar to hers-- straight, long brown hair parted in the middle, same age range, same features...

Here is another personality at odds with society, thinking himself to be better than others, almost as if he is above the law and entitled to more than he has been allotted. What's funny (or unfunny) about Bundy, though, is that he chose to try and adapt to the society he loathed by incorporating himself into its trappings. He helped Republicans raise funds for their campaigns. He studied law, and in fact he was also working in forensic science fields when he was at the peak of his killing, an occupation that allowed him to stay one step ahead of the authorities at all times.

When he was caught, he escaped from jail a number of times, which built up his image as an outlaw and allowed friends, family and supporters to feel that he was wrongly accused of a crime he didn't commit. He went so far as to defend himself in court, acting as his own counsel.

Ted Bundy had groupies during his trial and even after his conviction. It is said that he fathered a child with one of his groupies shortly before he was executed January 24, 1989, two days after my 15th birthday.

Even the trial judge, in his reading of the sentence, said to Bundy that it was such a shame that he was found guilty, because he might've made a good lawyer one day. Obviously, he wasn't that good of a lawyer, but it certainly took some balls to even attempt it in the first place.

I have a hard time believing that Ted Bundy felt any remorse for his actions. In contrast to Dahmer, who was very forthcoming about his problems after his conviction and actually demonstrated some remorse to his victims' families, Ted Bundy seemed to be content with the path of his life. He accepted it as such and made the most of it. If he had to kill a bunch of people along the way, it was worth it to him.

Yet, in the minds of many, Jeffrey Dahmer is the bigger monster, because his crimes were so unspeakably gruesome that human beings have a hard time sympathizing with him. We find Dahmer repugnant and disgusting because he ate his victims and had sex with them when they were dead, sometimes keeping their remains in the apartment.

But Ted Bundy often went back to the crime scene, before the bodies were discovered, and did equally horrible things to them. As terrible as Dahmer's deeds were, you get the sense that Dahmer was a man with absolutely no understanding of himself. With Bundy, you get the sense that not only did Bundy understand himself, but that his self-loathing fueled his desire to take as many people with him as he could.

Jeffrey Dahmer never advanced beyond a certain stage, whereas Ted Bundy advanced past that stage and into a whole other state of being.

Dahmer didn't know how to control himself, and might've done something about it had he known what to do. He candidly spoke, in jail, of not being able to stop the thoughts that entered into his mind. It was as if he was programmed, against his will, to commit the atrocities that he did. His murders were hardwired to his sexual desires, like Bundy, but in a compulsive manner that someone like Bundy would've considered weak or decadent.

Ted Bundy didn't care about stopping the violent thoughts, or rather, he figured the only way to make them momentarily stop was to kill women.

What's ironic is that Dahmer's jury found that he was not insane, because he knew the difference between right and wrong. Bundy argued that he was innocent from beginning to the end-- to plead not guilty by reason of insanity was a worse fate (in his mind) than pleading complete innocence. Therefore, I have to wonder if he knew what he did was wrong. If he thought his actions were not wrong, doesn't that make him insane?

With Dahmer, I feel pity and compassion, despite the fact that he showed neither to his victims until after it was too late. With Bundy, I feel anger and resentment, because he really did have it all going for him but he couldn't escape or correct his warped pathology. His ego wouldn't allow it.

Even their respective executions are marked by contrasts: Bundy was murdered by the state, an institution he would've surely belonged to had he not been exposed as a serial killer; Dahmer was killed by a black inmate whose nickname was "Christ", a fitting sobriquet because Dahmer admitted that he often thought of himself as The Devil.

But the thing they had in common, besides homicidal urges, was their narcissistic detachment from the rest of the world. Dahmer's personal hell was hidden from view, Bundy's was seemingly out in the open, but both of them were tyrannical rulers in their imaginary realms. They had the power to take away human lives, and in their minds there was no conscience to restrain them from doing what they did, no voice in the back of the head telling them to stop before it goes too far. The narcissist, because of his attachment to his own desires and fears, never knows when enough is enough.

If only they had been artists-- maybe they would've channeled their demons into something positive. Remember, Adolph Hitler was an aspiring artist once upon a time, but his full-blown narcissism couldn't deal with the rejection. The true narcissist cannot accept their own shortcomings, and they make desperate ploys to compensate for their inadequacies... sometimes at the expense of the world as we know it.

I feel that our current President is a narcissist, in many ways. He has never had anyone challenging him in his life, and so it is no surprise when he says these inhuman things and expresses these banal sentiments that so often slip from his mouth like dry turds. He has no empathy, and he possesses an exaggerated notion of his actual abilities. He didn't get elected President because he was a good candidate-- hell, he didn't even get elected!

Therefore, as an artist who wants to use this forum as a weapon against injustice and bias (and who also wants to feed his own narcissism), I say we adopt a new name for our President.

I've been calling him President George W. Nixon for some time, but it hasn't caught on. How about we call him President Bundy? That seems to fit, for more than one reason.

Or maybe President Serial Killer. How about President Sociopath?

Naw, he might enjoy being called by that last name...

President Bundy it is.

ATTENTION

What do you get when you fall in love?
A guy with a pin who'll burst your bubble
That's what you get for all your trouble
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again


She called me early Saturday morning to tell me she had the latest work available for me. I was groggy and surprised to be hearing from her because lately she and I have been keeping a friendly distance. Of course I wanted to see her, and she said she'd stop by.

She walked in, her eyes to the floor, her hair pulled back and her face as lovely as the first time I ever laid eyes on it. I must've looked like a damned fool, in my lazy boxer briefs and my uncombed hair matted into the shape of a conical Mohawk. I sat down at the computer and took a look at her work. So detailed, so complete... she took something that I had thrown together in Photoshop and made it into a digital work of art, not a masterpiece but a minor miracle nonetheless...

We shared a few laughs. I like her laugh, because it embodies the word "mirthful". It is more like a low-pitched giggle, like a hum emanating between tightly closed lips. If something is hilarious, she'll open her mouth wide and guffaw, but I prefer her quiet hum-giggles, akin to the cartoon character Barney Rubble but less Neanderthal.

I asked her if she was hungry; she said, "I could be." What the fuck is that supposed to mean, I asked myself. Sensing that she was going to decline, I told her that I was going to pick up my friend Down Low and get some food, and that if she wanted to come along she could. She said she had to be at her brother's place nearby, but I suspect that, if I had invited only her, she would've come with me.

I asked her about her ex, and she said that he called her recently to let her know that he has found a new girlfriend.

"Did he say that to make you jealous?"

"No, I think... I think he said it to let me know that he's moved on, in a weird way."

"I can buy that. Men have no tact when it comes to that. In some strange way, yes, you might be right."

She saw a painting on the wall and asked me if it was mine.

"No," I said, "that was done by The Gypsy. He gave it to me. I haven't started painting yet. I haven't had any time."

I appreciated her asking me about the painting. One thing about Eve that I like is that she asks about those kinds of things, and it tells me that she is still interested in my life and what I do with it. Unfortunately, it always catches me off guard and I end up sounding like it's not a big deal, even when it is.

I wanted to kiss her and hold her right then and there, grab her by the shoulders and throw her onto my couch and lean in close, sliding down her neck to her collarbone, making my way back up to decorate her mouth, fingers through the hair gently, my right index finger tickling her jawline...

Instead, we said our goodbyes for the day, and maybe some day soon she and I can sit down and talk about what we mean to each other. But for now, she's still getting used to being on her own, in her own apartment, with her own job, driving her own car and living her own life, and I have to let her have that. I must let her have that, because it isn't fair that I've had all the time in the world to cultivate this for myself and then to expect her to come along for the ride without having anything to show for it for herself...

I have been meeting new girls here and there, but in a very real sense I'm waiting on her, and as long as it doesn't get me down I think I can handle it.


*/*


What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
After you do, he'll never phone ya
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again


Down Low and I hung out at his mother's fiancee's house in the Encino Hills. We had brunch with his mother, the fiancee, his aunt, and his cousin Jamie outside on the patio overlooking the southern part of the Valley.

Jamie is 21 and cute but not drop-dead gorgeous. Low told me that she looked "ethnic", code for saying she looks Jewish. He also said she has low self-esteem, because she is a party girl and wants a boyfriend but is too "easy". I told him that she will figure it out eventually, and as long as she doesn't get involved with a bad crowd she will be fine.

Jamie was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was raised in the Detroit suburbs, isolated from the harsh reality of the streets but exposed to the banal boredom of the middle-class. At a young age she learned that men wanted to sleep with her, and so she has done what most teenage girls have done: ditched school, experimented with drugs, had sex, and tried to fit in.

When I saw her, I could tell she wanted my attention. I can always tell when a girl wants my attention, but it's not the same as lust or desire. The wanting for attention is something they are not aware of, something in their eyes that they cannot hide, no matter how good of an actress or how they act on the exterior. I confirm this by catching them sneaking glances at me. She is curious, because she is moving to L.A. in two months and wants to know what to expect.

I know what she can expect: insincere pickup lines in bars, competing with impossibly made-up women, lying men and cheating boyfriends, narcissists and ego trippers, the shallowest of the shallow, one-night stands that end badly, exchanged phone numbers with no callbacks...

When I speak in a conversation, I know how I sound: educated, intelligent, informed. This helps girls like Jamie to open up to me. But what catches them by surprise is how much restraint I show, how many questions I ask, how many times I offer them the opportunity to talk as I listen.

I have no intention of making a move on Low's cousin, but if she ever needs a guy friend to talk to, I would be more than happy. If I knew a guy who'd be good for her, I'd arrange it. If I had any advice to give her, I'd offer it. There's something about a young woman, unsure of herself, anxious to get out and live a life, that touches a soft spot inside of me.

There's a line in The Godfather about how only women and children are allowed to be carefree. But it seems to me that, nowadays, the cares of women and children surpass those of a man, in many ways. Yes, they may be allowed to be carefree, but are they able to spend that allowance?


*/*


Don't tell me what it's all about
'Cause I've been there and I'm glad I'm not
Out of those chains, those chains that bind you
That is why I'm here to remind you:

What do you get when you fall in love?
You only get lies and pain and sorrow
So for at least until tomorrow
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again
I'll never fall in love again


I received a phone call from a female acquaintance yesterday. She wanted to know if I'd go see Dave Matthews with her in August. I said I would, even though I don't really listen to him. I dislike his singing voice, but over the years I've come to appreciate his guitar playing.

This girl and I have never been intimate, and in many ways I am the man she goes to when she is tired of the other men in her life, the ones who only want sex, the ones who play games, the ones who leave her high and dry. If she has to go somewhere and doesn't want to show up by herself, she calls me. Likewise, I call her when I don't want to show up stag to an event.

She asked me about Eve-- the last time we talked I mentioned that Eve and I were back together. I explained the situation and she seemed to be understanding. Then, she proceeded to tell me about her dry run, how last year she met 6 different guys but this year has been a bust so far. I listened but I must admit that my attention wandered, due to smoking some weed known as The Garlic that had my nostrils flaring and my head spinning.

I was supposed to go to some housewarming party with this girl on Saturday, but I had to flake out because of my cousin Pete's surprise party. Pete's girlfriend ordered a stripper-- how could I resist?

I guess I could always try to make a move on her one day and see where it goes, but let's say that I did and it worked-- where would that leave us? I would be just another guy who wanted to get some and who said what was necessary to get it, and then I'd be on my way. I don't want to do that. I've had enough of that, especially when I hear about how these "sure things" she hooks up with always go sour.

She's my age, and she still hasn't figured it out yet. Maybe if she made someone wait, they wouldn't be in such a hurry to leave after they get what they want.

I can wait forever, though, and it looks like that's why women trust me. They know that I just don't give my love to any old girl, despite my willingness to do so. They know, from talking to me, from candidly hearing my hopes and fears, that I am a shelter for them. I want nothing from them. Maybe they wish that I would demand something from them, to make them feel "sexy" or "desirable", but that's exactly the problem: they keep falling for that fallacy, they keep thinking that getting a man to pant and drool over them is some extraordinary accomplishment.

It is not. To arouse a man is not some sort of science. It is rudimentary biology. It is simple chemistry. It is easy.

If this girl really wanted to make me happy, she'd tell the next smooth operator down the line that they have to wait. I don't forsee that happening any time soon.

So, for at least until tomorrow...

NO ONLINE NOVEL ENTRY TODAY...

I have never read any of the Douglas Adams books, even though I grew up surrounded by avid fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and other titles.

I know all the basic concepts behind the series, and I know it used to be a British radio program, and I know that Adams was friends with Graham Chapman from the Monty Python troupe, whom I adore, and I know that the books are insanely funny...

...but for some reason, they passed me by.

Usually, I duck pop-cultural phenomenons because I want to be different, but Adams' books passed me by, I think, because nobody ever grabbed me by the collar and urged me to read them. I think people also assumed that I had read them when I hadn't.

Anyway, because of the upcoming movie, I have picked up a paperback copy of the third book in the four-book "trilogy", which is entitled Life, The Universe And Everything. I started reading it last night.

It's fucking brilliant.

For a practitioner of 'pataphysics such as myself, I can't believe I never got into this shit. It's funny beyond belief, a mixture of Kurt Vonnegut and Alfred Jarry's Doctor Faustroll, with some Python-esque absurdity thrown in for good measure. It plays like Futurama as if it were performed by Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore.

This is one of those times when I'm actually glad I missed out on it the first time around, because I think I appreciate this kind of bizarre sci-fi surrealist humor more at this point in my life.

Plus, now I am not obligated to watch the movie until I read the other books. Not that I don't think it will be good or bad-- I have no feeling towards the movie. I'm sure the movie will ruin the books, but then again it might improve on other aspects.

We'll see. All I know is, until I finish reading this book, I'm not going to post another online novel chapter. And why? Because this is where I want the novel to go. I want it to progress into pure insanity, slowly but surely. So far, I've been setting up the premises, but unsure of where to take it.

Thank you, Douglas Adams, for pointing me in the right direction... and from beyond the grave, no less!


*/*


We have Direct TV in the News Office now. I get to watch TV shows and movies, but mostly we have it tuned to CNN en espanol and other lives news sources.

Watching CNN in English a few minutes ago, I couldn't help but notice that, during the Anderson Cooper show, all of the outgoing music beds were really cool tunes from new-wave bands of yore.

I recognized "Marquee Moon" by Television as they broke to one commercial break. In case you never heard of Television, they're the band that critics like to compare to The Strokes, even though there isn't any comparison to make. For one thing, Television were a great band who knew how to play their instruments very well, while The Strokes are a lo-fi rock version of a boy band.

Anyway, the next commercial break turned my head because the music was Siouxsie & The Banshees' cover of "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop.

Whoever is doing the music cues on Cooper's show over at CNN: Keep it up! You rock!

Last night, I saw a TV commercial using "The Mountain Song" by Jane's Addiction. I was upset at first, but then I revelled in the subversity of a band like Jane's Addiction (hell, a band with a name like Jane's Addiction) licensing their songs for TV ads. Next thing you know, there's gonna be ads for Methadone on TV, in between spots for the latest pharmaceutical drugs...

Gen X is coming into its own, no doubt.

Now I'm watching Sixteen Candles on the Family Channel. Edited for basic cable, yes, but still a potent, hilarious depiction of '80's-era teen snot. Oh shit! There's Joan Cusack, sitting in a bus seat across from Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. Cusack is wearing some major dental hardware.

My ear detects that John Hughes couldn't get the rights to Madness' "Our House" for the first school dance scene. He was able to get Art Of Noise's "Peter Gunn Theme" featuring Duane Eddy, and Spandau Ballet's "True"... but who can't get the rights to those songs? Even P.M. Dawn was able to sample the latter.

No, Hughes had to settle for a sound-alike track, the kind of music that sounds just like a recognizable hit but with crucial details left out. The songs are tweaked just enough to render them "original"... and just enough to squeak by the recording artist's lawyers without incident!

Ah, now I hear a little Oingo Boingo... we all know what became of Danny Elfman, don't we?

And The Specials? Man, this movie is better than I remember it!

Memory Lane, looks like I'm taking a walk all over you...

Okay, I'd better go now-- need to finish these projects I have open before my shift is done...

If I don't post again tonight...
HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!

RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL: THE MUSICAL

I couldn't resist.

For years, I've been tempted to take the Scientology "personality test", just to see what kind of absurdities could be divined. I found one online (no link) and got 40 questions into through it, then I skipped ahead to see how many more questions there were to answer. I eventually realized, by Question #120, that there was no discernible end in sight!

The questions are of the type where, no matter what you answer, you will always be deemed eligible to try out Scientology at the end of it. But what's really telling is that you don't get the results right then and there-- you have to go into a local Scientology center in order to retrieve your results.

To do this, you have to give them your vitals. So I gave them a fake name and address, because I have no intention of giving them my info. And I'm never going into one of their centers, because I fear that (strong-minded as I am) they will brainwash me as soon as I enter their facilities with some form of Bop Gun, not unlike what the Star Child used on Sir Nose D'Void O'Funk in Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome... except this Bop Gun won't make me dance!

Here's a sampling of the kinds of questions they ask you:


+ means yes or mostly yes

? means maybe or uncertain

- means no or mostly no


Do you make thoughtless remarks or accusations which later you regret? + ? -
When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed? + ? -
Do you browse through railway timetables, directories, or dictionaries just for pleasure? + ? -
When asked to make a decision, would you be swayed by your like or dislike of the personality involved? + ? -
Do you intend two or less children in your family even though your health and income will permit more? + ? -
Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it? + ? -
Would you prefer to be in a position where you did not have the responsibilities of making decisions? + ? -
Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people? + ? -
Do you consider more money should be spent on social security? + ? -
Do other people interest you very much? + ? -
Is your voice monotonous, rather than varied in pitch? + ? -
Do you normally let the other person start the conversation? + ? -
Are you readily interested in other people's conversations? + ? -
Would the idea of inflicting pain on game, small animals or fish prevent you from hunting or fishing? + ? -
Are you often impulsive in your behavior? + ? -
Do you speak slowly? + ? -
Are you usually concerned about the need to protect your health? + ? -
Does an unexpected action cause your muscles to twitch? + ? -
Are you normally considerate in your demands on your employees, relatives, or pupils? + ? -
Do you consider that you could give a valid “snap judgment”? + ? -
Do your past failures still worry you? + ? -
Do you find yourself being extra-active for periods lasting several days? + ? -Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do? + ? -
Is it normally hard for you to “own up and take the blame”? + ? -
Do you have a small circle of close friends, rather than a large number of friends, speaking acquaintances? + ? -
Is your life a constant struggle for survival? + ? -
Do you often sing or whistle just for the fun of it? + ? -
Are you considered warm-hearted by your friends? + ? -
Would you rather give orders than take them? + ? -
Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates? + ? -
Could you agree to “strict discipline”? + ? -
Would the idea of making a complete new start cause you much concern? + ? -
Do you make efforts to get others to laugh and smile? + ? -
Do you find it easy to express your emotions? + ? -
Do you refrain from complaining when the other person is late for an appointment? + ? -
Are you sometimes considered by others a “spoilsport”? + ? -
Do you consider there are other people who are definitely unfriendly toward you and work against you? + ? -
Would you admit you were wrong just to “keep the peace”? + ? -
Do you have only a few people of whom you are really fond? + ? -
Are you rarely happy, unless you have a special reason?


You get the drift by now. I couldn't take anymore.


*/*


I watched Never Scared, Chris Rock's most recent HBO special, on DVD last night. It was funnier than when I first saw it. Most people I have talked to have commented that it wasn't as funny as his other specials, but I liked it-- he's going on 40 and he can't keep talking about the same old shit.

Recently, on Hip Hop Music.com, there was a discussion about whether Rock is a self-hating Black, because his targets are mostly people like Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson and R. Kelly. I say "No", because really what Rock represents is the court jester, the one who checks everybody at the door and cuts egos down to size.

And he's really good at it too.

Most people on the Internet pride themselves on being no-nonsense, but then they get offended when someone like Chris Rock nails their bullshit right on the head. Chris Rock is an anti-narcissist, in the sense that his comedy isn't self-glorifying or a vehicle for him to fill us in on his personal life. He does make light of himself: his looks, his star status, his position in the world... but luckily he's not so full of himself, otherwise his attacks on people like Marion Barry and black people who buy excessive jewelry would ring hollow.

He's a social commentator, in the strictest sense, and in Never Scared he crosses over into straight-up politicizing, with the vocal cadence of a Baptist preacher... and it's long overdue. I'm glad Chris Rock is around, because when I laugh at his jokes, it is in recognition that what he's talking about (out of its comedic context) really isn't that funny.

I often say that I laugh at certain things in self-defense, and I get the feeling that Chris Rock makes jokes in self-defense, to keep himself from shedding a tear over things like crack addiction, the battle of the sexes, and the sad state of rap music.

For those who admire the early Chris Rock, Never Scared features (as an extra bonus) his very first HBO special, Big-Ass Jokes. It's a marked contrast to the new special because he still hadn't quite found his voice yet, even if his brand of humor was wholly evident.

RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL VI: A NEW BEGINNING

I visited the blog of someone I used to e-mail and communicate with, someone who had similar interests in conspiracy lore and mythology. I used to be linked to his site, but after an on-and-off series of arguments in my Comments section, I decided to cease communications. I still have it linked to my blog, because this person goes to great lengths to dig up obscure info and tasty morsels of arcane trivia. I check out his blog every once in a while, leaving no comments. I just got sick of arguing with someone over who is more esoteric and argumentative.

Then I had the stalker, which I chalk up to "cyber karma", cosmic retribution for my online fight-picking over the years. But he hasn't come around since I put up that picture of him on my old blog URL.

Since I've been contemplating my own narcissism and the narcissism of others lately, I have come to conclude that both my stalker and this one blog person are narcissists. Is this a case of misery loving company? No, I don't think so. It has to do with recognizing in myself the tendency to rob others of their N-supply, because I am so aware of how others do it to me.

I went to the old blog this morning, and someone added a comment, under the 'anonymous' banner, asking when I was going to update the blog. Is it possible that I had some readers who weren't on my e-mail list, who didn't know what happened to me when I up and disappeared? Or is it the stalker, trying to get me to redirect him to this blog?

I must admit, I deliberately lured the stalker to the old blog, so that I could at least have him answering me on my terms. I didn't intend to leave the spot, but I just got tired of reading the same old shit from him. I thought that we were going to have exciting back-and-forth battles on my blog, but all he wanted to do was the Web equivalent of "I'm rubber and you're glue"...

Visiting the blog of the former cyber-buddy, I detected the same logic at work: he received some hate e-mail, posted it with a line-for-line refutation, then posted the e-mailer's address in the Comments section so that his small cadre of readers could make snide remarks.

It's something that I would do, which is why it makes me sick to think that I used to get off on it.

Hell, who am I kidding? I still do get off on it. Who knows how long it will be until someone comes around, looking to stir it up with me? I wouldn't be surprised to find an anonymous remark in the Comments section for this post, trying to get my blood boiling.

But, I'm making an effort, I think, to restrain myself. And part of it stems from realizing that going through all of the trouble to combat someone online is really pathetic. It doesn't take much to get someone's goat online-- all one has to do is attack the False Persona, and the curator of said Persona will feel that their sense of self (their source of N-supply) has been infringed upon, and they will respond by trying to make themselves look good, as opposed to making valid points of argument.

It's ego gratification, not debate.

Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back really resonated with me, I guess...


*/*


For those who don't like hip-hop, skip this. However, I think you should read it.

50 Cent's new album The Massacre is a butter platter. I thought it was going to be a bit soft, because L.A. rap radio station Power 106 did a sneak peek a few weeks back and it sounded like 50 was going the L.L. Cool J route: buffed rapper spittin' love rhymes and all that...

Naw, dog...

The Massacre is a straight-up gangsta masterpiece, and 50 proves that he is the Man of the Current Hour. The beats are stellar, the rhymes are witty and catchy (50 is one of the few rappers who actually sounds good when he's singing a hook), and a few of the songs raise the bar lyrically.

Case in point: "A Baltimore Love Thing", produced by Q Beats (whom we will no doubt hear more from in the future), a song where 50 raps from the point-of-view of heroin... you know, the drug?

I've never done H, but I like songs about it, from Lou Reed to Kurt Cobain. But this is the first time I've ever heard a song like this. To quote the lyrics doesn't do it justice, because the magic of rap is that the music, beat, vocal delivery and lyrics all conspire at the same time to create an atmosphere, as opposed to delivering a song with a melody, rhythm and structure. In this sense, rap is not music as we know it-- it has a more cinematic function, perhaps hallucinogenic. It forces you to visualize the action, much like old-time radio dramas.

It demands that you use your imagination, even if the language sometimes leaves nothing to it.

I think that's why skits between songs are so prevalent in hip-hop-- they function on the same level as the rap songs themselves, recreating a mood instead of singing you a song.

As for the drug angle, it may seem like an exploitaive angle for 50 to take, what with his public admission to not being a drug-user... I have a hard time believing it, but then again 50 used to slang crack, and what's the second rule of drug-dealing? Don't get high on your own supply...

(By the way, the first rule is: Never underestimate the other guy's greed.)

Still, whether 50 has ridden the White Horse or not, his lyrics in "Love Thing" equate a love relationship between a man and a woman to drug addiction. It's very convincing, very chilling, and it elevates his raps to another level of awareness.


When we first met, I thought you never doubt me
Now you tryin' to leave me, you never live without me
Girl I'm missing you, come and see me soon
Tie your arm up, put that lighter under that spoon

[Chorus: repeat 2X]
We got a love thing
Girl you tried to leave me but you need me
Can you see you're addicted to me?
We got a love thing
I can take ya higher girl
Fuckin' with me, you can be all you can be


How many women out there have been with a guy who was like that? How many men have been through that with a woman?

I raise my hand. Right now I'm withdrawing from Eve, and it occurred to me, as I listened to "A Baltimore Love Thing" last night, that she is my drug, my heroin. I was clean for a while, not even thinking about her. Then I fell off the wagon, and binged for a few months... and now I'm back on my own, fiending, waiting for a fix, anxious to get back to where I was with her...


After that first night she fall in love, then chase the feelin
I hung out with Marvin when he wrote Sexual Healing
Kurt Cobain, we were good friends, Ozzy Osbourne too
I be with rock stars, see you lucky I'm fuckin' with you
I chilled with Frankie Lymon and Jimi Hendrix crew
See this is new to you, but to me this aint new
I live the lavish life
Listen if the mood is right
Me you and ya sister can do the do tonight
I never steer you wrong, if you hyper I make you calm
I'll be your incentive and your reason to make you move on
Let's make a date, promise you'll come to see me
Even if it means you have to sell ya mama's TV
I love you, love me back
No one said lovin' me be easy


Love is a drug; that is to say, it causes a chemical reaction whose source is the brain... therefore, it is a natural drug, like adrenaline... but it's still a drug, and when we fall in love, we are merely reacting to a combination of chemicals in our brains.

Our hearts have nothing to do with the love high-- it's just a blood pump, and our brain is the nerve center that regulates that pump. Our hearts are empty symbols to express our emotions, but really-- we are all chemical drug addicts.

If there is someone in your life who makes you feel bad when you are not around them, someone whom you feel you need to depend upon, as a crutch maybe... then you are addicted to them, and you need to go cold turkey.

It's easier said than done. I keep trying to get her out of my mind but I end up calling her, leaving stupid voice mails that sound like I'm trying to pretend like I don't want her so badly. Does she care? I don't know-- I think she has her own drug issues to deal with... real drug issues, not metaphorical ones.

I think I am more addicted to women than anything else. I can leave a joint alone and not feel edgy, but whenever I start getting some, it's hard as a motherfucker on me when she leaves me... and believe me, they always leave me.

And if they still want me in their life, they don't want to give me the ultimate love fix-- sex. Sex is to love as crack is to cocaine-- it's a harder, more intense version of its source. Sex is purely chemical, and it's no wonder that there are so many people online, looking for quick sex fixes because it makes them feel good.

I'm not saying I'm a sex addict. I'm just saying that, when a man gets it regularly and then it gets taken away, he goes through a panic, and he finds himself willing to do almost anything to get it again.

I'm in that rough spot, where I think I'll fuck anything that moves. But I've been here before, and I know I just need to tough it out, weather the storm. When Jeanie and I broke up in 2000, I kept my notebook next to me to remind me of how badly she treated me, just so I wouldn't be tempted to go back and beg her to fuck me.

Maybe I need to start re-reading my blog entries from the end of last year, to remind me of how far I strayed from my goal of achieving closure with Eve.

Thanks, 50, for making that song. It got me thinking about my desires, and it shed some light on something I've been pondering for a long time.

That's what a good rap track can do, if you let it.

all of it

all of it washes over me like riverwater streaming over stones and carving delicate paths like capillaries branching out into oblivion or a million different combinations none of them returning to the source none of them replenishing my thirst

i know how to speak i know how to form words on the tip of my tongue but i dont know how to load them with sufficient assurance i dont know how to make people feel secure and safe i thrive on dangers elements i suckle from the breast of chaos and i am at home with disorder and anarchy humming and percolating vibrating from within

sometimes i want to vent and sometimes i want to scream but it is getting harder and harder to find ears wide open to my miseries and sometimes it gets me down but not all of the time sometimes it actually cheers me up and then i am floating above it all and nothing can catch me as i ascend

here is the desperate madman in the marketplace grabbing individuals by the face and staring long and hard into their eyes as if it were a meaningful kiss and here he is asking if god has died demanding to know the whereabouts of the devil pleading with anyone within the vicinity begging to be heard and acknowledged for fear that it is all in vain that nothing bears fruit from these mislaid plans that nothing stands in the aftermath of feral desert sands that none of us are able to follow any commands because we have buried our hands behind our heads and we play dead

i am heading home

AN EYE FOR AN EYE?

Did I mention that my half-brother AJ was jumped by some wannabe gangsters last week?

Friday, after school, my brother AJ, all of 14, was walking home, minding his own, when suddenly a carload of people drove up next to him.

"Are you AJ?"

"Yeah."

"Do you know Monette?"

"Yeah. What about her?"

They got out of the car, three or four of them, plus two girls along for the ride. They hit him, beat him to the ground and stomped on him. The girls were laughing the whole time.

He's a tough kid-- he's alright. A big-ass knot in his forehead, and a hospital visit, but no extended stay, and nothing broken or sprained.

Monette is some trouble-making girl who's brother, Michael, used to be friends with AJ. Then, some kid named Daniel started living with Michael and Monette and their family, and all hell broke loose.

It doesn't help matters that my other brother, DM, is a show-off and a braggart and has a big mouth. DM's car was stripped and torched when he left it by the Wal-Mart in Lancaster one night.

I don't know if AJ getting jumped had to do with DM or not, but one thing is for sure: AJ isn't a knucklehead. He minds his own, stays out of trouble, and is popular with the ladies. But because of his loyalty to DM, he suffers the repercussions.

Monette's family and associates have been terrorizing my family for the span of a few months: tires slashed, rumors spread, threats made... but they fucked up real bad when they jumped AJ.

I often state in this blog that, if anything ever happened to me, the retaliation would not be pretty. This is not an exaggeration. Unlike all those people you all grew up around, who claimed they had an uncle in the Mob or a cousin in the Sheriff's Department, I am related to family members who will fuck you up if you ever get on their bad side.

They will. Not maybe, not might... they will.

And there's no way for someone like me to stop them if they're pissed off enough to take action.

Later that night, before the news of AJ's plight even reached me, my stepfather Terry and my older brother Joe took care of the punks who jumped my younger brother.

Terry did a bid in Iraq about a year ago. Joe fought in Operation Desert Storm. They found out where the gang of teens (16, 17 year olds) were staying, went over there, called them out, and beat the living shit out of them. Those same girls who were laughing as AJ was getting stomped begged and pleaded with my stepdad and brother to have mercy.

Yes, it sounds bad, two grown men pummeling some punk-ass teenagers to the ground... but so is jumping my younger brother for no fucking reason, without giving him a fair fight to begin with.

In fact, AJ was brought along, and allowed to deliver a few punches to the culprits as they were being held up by my older brother.

Don't tell me about wrong or right. Don't tell me about escalating violence, or letting the law handle it. Don't tell me that what they did was wrong, because when I heard the news the next morning, from my sister, my only concern was that Terry and Joe would have the cops called on them.

But think about it: two Army vets, dealing with a bunch of snot-nosed wannabe gangsters (the set they claim is Santa Clarita-- SANTA CLARITA! Talk about being soft from the get-go), in this politically-charged climate of societal military worship? I don't think the cops are going to arrest anyone in my family.

Not to mention, AJ is my stepdad's only child, and I don't blame him for losing his cool and going after these chumps. Terry is a kind, mellow person, but the war in Iraq scarred him a bit, and he's got a lot of aggression left inside of him. And he's been cool up to this point, not flipping out when the tires got slashed or the threatening phone messages came around.

I have a feeling that, rather than escalate, the attacks will cease, once word gets around that AJ was swiftly avenged.

Sometimes in life, you have to fight back. That's all there is to it. It's not a good thing, it's not an instinct to be proud of... but it's a fact.

I love peace. I want to promote peace, not war. But sometimes, people bring the war to you, and you have to either run or fight. And if they back you into a corner and you can't run, you'd better fight.

I'm sure that, if AJ had been warned and given a fair chance, he would've run. But they gaffled him up real quick, and he didn't even get a chance to land one punch, thanks to being outnumbered by older kids.

So, when does the peace process break down and the war process kick in? When they hurt one of your own, and that's what these idiots did.

And they paid the price.

Will they retaliate? Probably not. I think my stepdad and my older brother taught these wannabes a lesson: be careful who you're fucking with, lest you find yourself getting knocked the fuck out on your front lawn on a Friday night with all of your "hardcore" friends watching.

I don't expect anyone to understand this at all. In fact, I expect to hear all sorts of shit from people about this. I expect to be called a 'savage' or a 'brute' for going along with this, so go ahead-- names don't hurt. Kicks and punches and derisive laughter? Those things hurt.

The ultimate irony: my family moved up to Lancaster to get out of the Valley, because of all the violence going on...

That's all for now. I'll keep you posted, if you even care at this point...

"THE CROWN OF THE JESTER" (work in progress, chapter four)

Robert River packed his suitcase and listened to some music as he ran around his apartment, taking care of last-minute arrangements: leaving food and litter for the cat-sitter; hiding all of the checkbooks and personal bank statements in his safe; disabling the pay-per-view options on his cable box and disconnecting the phone...

He never had a regular cat-sitter because they all proved to be unreliable in some way, so Robert always hired somehow new, someone he would never use again. He usually met the sitters online, in chat rooms and on message boards. Sometimes he advertised in the Recycler or the local free press, but this time around he went to Craig's List and found someone who was able to commit on short notice.

With time to spare before the sitter arrived, Robert sat down on the couch and tapped his toes to the music, a CD version of the Iggy Pop & The Stooges' classic, Raw Power. The song he was listening to, "Penetration", consisted of one repetitive monster guitar riff, while singer Iggy Pop crooned and cooed and hissed over the muscular rhythm section.

Robert liked this album because it was mixed so raw, so very "lo-fi"... It is considered one of the first true punk rock albums, and he remembered being turned on to the album by his father, the late James River. James always had music playing in the house when Robert was a kid, and this album in particular captured his imagination like none other. Robert reasoned, as he got older, that the album had some kind of sonic effect on him, because he couldn't explain his attraction to it.

Despite a few slower paced tracks, including the brooding ballad "Gimme Danger", Raw Power lives up to its title: unkempt rock and roll adrenaline, sloppily produced and with all audio levels pushed into the red. Robert would play it on a loop sometimes, and he noticed, as he sat waiting for the sitter to come through, that the album got progressively LOUDER with each song. He figured this out because, when the entire disc is played on "repeat", track number One, "Search And Destroy", was significantly lower in volume than the last track, "Death Trip".

Very little bottom-end is in the Raw Power mix, which gives it a shrill, tinny sound. Robert was surprised to discover, years ago, that David Bowie assisted in the mixing of this rock classic-- Bowie's albums are always produced very well, and the stark contrast between Raw Power and an album like The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars was enough to make Robert question what was more aesthetically pleasing to the ear-- smooth production values, or ugly, muddy, nasty mixes.

Raw Power often made his head hurt to listen to, with its screeching treble settings and the lowdown dirtiness of the record. And of all the songs on the album, the drone of "Penetration" hypnotized him most, as if an aural drill were boring right through the center of his medulla oblongatta.

I wonder if they'll ever remix this album, Robert wondered. A digital re-mastering, maybe?

Robert remembered a conversation he had with his father, long before he succumbed to coronary thrombosis, when he was 13, having just become a teenager. Robert didn't remember a lot of his conversations with his father because they were ususally forgettable affairs-- James was notorious for exaggerating tales, re-imagining scenarios, and straight-out lying when it came to their conversations.

But this one Robert remembered, because it involved the Iggy & The Stooges album that he was so enamored of as a child. Robert remembered that his father wanted to buy the master tapes of the album and remix it properly.

"I want all the levels to be set right," James said to his son, as they ate breakfast in their spacious kitchen. Along the walls of the hallway adjacent to the kitchen and dining area were gold records, all of them albums that James had produced or engineered later on in his life, after he'd stopped playing in go-nowhere groups and married his wife Rose, and had their only son Robert...

"I'd like the drums to be cleaner. Can't hear what Scott Asheton is doing half of the time. And there's no bass mix at all-- as a bass player, this offends me. I know, I know, lots of bands eschew the bass player for their songs-- Jon Spencer's a good example, and there's others out there who do it too... but I just want to hear what it's supposed to sound like."

Robert looked at his father incomprehensively. Raw Power was one of the few albums he liked from his father's vast collection of vinyl, and it was very symbolic of their relationship that James wanted to doctor the one album of his that Robert felt didn't need to be fixed.

"I think it's supposed to sound dirty, dad," Robert said to hs father as he ate Cocoa Puffs cereal. "This music isn't for clean ears. That's what makes it sound so cool. Everyone else wants to sound so pro."

"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about," James said to Robert, careful to smile so that his son knew he was just being frank with his cursing. "I hear some of that stuff you listen to. It's all amateur. It all sounds like they recorded it in a toilet. I appreciate that kind of stuff when the band has no choice but to use primitive equipment, but I don't dig these guys who use good equipment to dirty up their sound... it's a waste, really. And as much as I like the album, I'd really like to hear it in a cleaner mix. That's all I'm saying. I mean, it's not like I'll ever get my wish, you know?"

"I like Raw Power how it is," Robert said. "If you ever try to get your hands on the masters, I swear I'll burn them up so you can't touch them."

James laughed. "Man, you're somethin' else, kid. I think I did a good job raising you!"

Robert didn't agree 100% with that notion. Sure, his dad was real laid-back, cool, and even somewhat famous, thanks to his short-lived stint as the bass player, vocalist and leader of a band called The Puerto Ricans that experienced some fame in the mid-80's. They had one big hit, and then the band broke up before they could capitalize on the momentum. The hit was called, "As The Romans Do", and it spent four weeks at the top of Billboard's Top 100 chart. The Puerto Ricans were even nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist but lost out to Bruce Hornsby & The Range in 1986.

But there were times when Robert wished his father were more like a parent than a buddy, a fact that was compounded by the lack of a mother in his life. For most of Robert's life, he never knew anything about his birth mother except that she "left" shortly after he was born. This led to feelings of negative self-worth, because Robert reasoned he must've done something wrong in order to make his own mother leave him behind. Then, as he grew older, he focused his anger on his father, reasoning that it was something he did to make her leave...

It wasn't until his 18 birthday, about six months after his father died, that Robert discovered the truth: that his mother had died during childbirth, and that James never had the courage nor the heart to tell his son the awful truth because it hurt him too much to even bring up.

It was then, and only then, that Robert understood why his father wore the crown of the Jester, why his father never so much as raised a hand against him in anger, why his father was so laid-back and mellow... it was all he could do to keep from falling apart. Apparently, the death of Rose was so devastating to James that he could never bring himself to talk about it to anyone else.

Now an adult orphan, Robert would sometimes feel the nippy bite of bitterness against his neck, as he tried to understand the grief that his father carried with him, as he tried to imagine what his mother was like, based only off of old photgraphs and tape recordings made before she gave birth to him. Robert used to listen to those tapes as obsessively as he used to listen to Raw Power, sitting on the carpet, watching the wheels of the tape machine spin slowly as the voice of his mother, clear as a ringing bell, emanated from the machine, as if she were speaking from the other room.

Robert imagined that his mother still looked as she did in the high school graduation photo that James had framed and placed on the piano mantle, with long straight brown hair down to her waist, an oval face, painted eyebrows and a Mona Lisa smirk that belied some secret knowledge, a riddle that only she knew the answer to, the solution to all of the mysteries in Robert's life up to that point...

Robert had many surrogate mothers, mostly James' groupie friends or girlfriends or long-term relationships that he'd maintained. None of them matched the image he had in his mind of his mother. It wasn't until Robert met Rachel Edison, his first real girlfriend in high school, that he felt like he ever really connected on an equal level with a girl.

He had Fabian Rourke to thank for introducing him to Rachel, because they were friends before Robert and Fabian ever became chummy. And Robert had Rachel to thank for a lot of things, but he hadn't seen her since their bitter break-up in 1994, two years after they'd graduated from high school.

After the break-up, Robert ended up in various pointless affairs, and really didn't focus a lot of his energy on trying to find a replacement mom or a female figure to decorate his solitary existence. Now that he knew his mother was dead, now that Rachel was gone and other women he met failed to ignite his emotional fire, he had no real interest in finding love. It was a useless pastime, to him.

The doorbell rang, and Robert, still in a stupor from smoking some hash an hour previous, got up, turned off the stereo and answered the door.

The girl at his door looked young, but not too young. Her name was April, and she was chewing bubble gum obnoxiously as she introduced herself.

"Hi, I'm April, the cat-sitter."

Robert let her in and proceeded to give her instructions on how to deal with the cat.

"Narcissus is really finicky when it comes to his food," he said, as he showed her where the cat supplies wers stashed. "Other than that, he's a friendly cat. Very affectionate. He likes girls, so he'll warm up to you in no time. Just remember to scoop his poop out of the litter every now and then, and the rest is Easy Street."

"That's a beautiful name, Narcissus," April said. "And I love his fur." She bent down to pet the gentle kitty cat, and he responded by rubbing his fur against her leg and purring. April started talking in a weird sort of baby talk to Narcissus, which caused Robert to raise an eyebrow and look at her like she was demented.

"Yeah, uh, well, I'll be back around early November, around the 10th."

"November 10th? That's my birthday!" April remarked.

"Oh, wow. Cool. How old will you be turning?"

"18," she said.

"Well, Happy Birthday in advance."

"Thank you, Mr. River."

Robert looked her over-- she appeared vulgar to him, unsophisticated, usually the mark of insolent youth. Her clothes were slutty and crass-- revealing midriff, hair in a pony tail with a pastel-colored scrunchie, tight jeans... she was attractive, but coarse and brash.

"Here's some money in advance-- you'll get the rest when I get back."

April did not expect this. "Oh, well... thank you, Mr. River. I didn't--"

"This is to guarantee that the place isn't burned down by the time I get back, okay?" Robert sapped the moment of any kind of humanity.

"Okay," she said, holding Narcissus in her arms.

"No parties," he said. Then, he reconsidered. "Actually, if you're going to have people over, call me on my cel phone. I'll let you know if I'm cool with it or not."

That was his father speaking through him. Always eager to please, never wanting to come off as a hard or bad guy, James always drew the line and then crossed it himself.

"Thanks again, Mr. River." This time there was no mistaking the tone of April's voice-- she was looking at Robert with her eyelids fluttering, trying her best to push out her breasts in his direction. It wasn't that she was feeling anything towards him, but rather it was an automatic reaction to any man, of any age, being nice to her. She figured that all guys want the same thing, and so she flirted with Robert, who was eight years her senior, simply to reassure herself that she was a hot dish.

Robert didn't flinch. He noticed the curves, the look in her eyes, and he knew that, if he so desired, he could probably score points with this girl. But he was never one to let his emotions run away from him, so he blinked once and stared at her directly in the eyes and said, "You're welcome. Have a good time."

Then, he bent his head down towards Narcissus and rubbed his forehead, talking in the same baby talk that April used only a few minutes prior.

When Robert left, April stood there wondering if he was gay or neutered or just not in his right mind-- how could he not see that she was young and hot? But it didn't seem to bother her at all, once she sat down and turned on the television.


*/*


Rachel Edison sat down and breathed a long sigh of exhaustion. The day had been long, and the students at the middle school where she was an administrator were antsier than normal that day.

She needed to relax and unwind before she could garner up the energy to start cooking dinner for her boyfriend, who was due off of work in about two hours. This day was their second anniversary as a couple, and Rachel was hoping that a romantic dinner for two would be the right way to express her love for such a patient and solid man as Jack Hawkins.

In fact, she was hoping that, sometime during that dinner, Jack would bend down on one knee and propose to her. Although Jack wasn't the first man she ever felt like she wanted to marry-- that designation went to her first true love, Robert River-- she definitely knew that Jack was up to the task of being a good husband and provider. Jack made a lot of money as the head of a company he started over a decade ago, one that specialized in setting up conventions in halls and hotels, for high-priced clients who wanted only the best for their annual get-togethers.

This left him with very little spare time, but Rachel understood-- to maintain their comfortable lifestyle, there were certain sacrifices to make. And it wasn't like Jack never had time for her. He would often fly her out to Las Vegas or wherever it was that he was setting up a convention site, and whenever he had a window of free time he would take Rachel out to shows, fancy restaurants, sightseeing tours and fine hotels. He treated her very well, and she had never felt so secure and in love in her entire life.

Granted, Rachel had not been very experienced with relationships by the time she met up with Jack Hawkins. Rachel attributed this to the fact that, although she was a good-looking girl, she didn't stand out from the other girls that she'd grown up around, her so-called "peers". Rachel was a plain girl, a smart girl-- she never dressed up like a hootchie or played dumb in order to impress a guy she liked. She didn't wear make-up in her high school years, and even after she relented to make herself look more presentable (thanks to her best friend at the time, Kelly Paper) she kept her fashion sense strictly in the faux-Goth zone: all black attire, drastic hair-dye jobs, the mandatory concert tee of an impossibly cool band like Bauhaus or Jane's Addiction, and ripped fishnet stockings.

Her first experience with a guy was an English teacher she met in her Freshman year of high school. He was at least 20 years older than him, and luckily she never let him get that far with her. He was a dirty old man, willing to go to jail if only for one last fleeting stab at sullying the immaculate pond of a female teen's virginity. He didn't love her, though, and that's what really hurt her about her fling with a married language instructor-- he'd convinced her that he did love her, and because she was so young and impressionable, she bought into it.

Reeling from the aftermath of that May-December romance, Rachel swore off guys in general and older men in particular. Then, she met Robert River through her platonic friend Fabian Rourke, at a high school party in their hometown of Wholesome.

Robert and Rachel hit it off immediately. It was the first time that the word "chemistry" ever occurred to her in regards to a guy she liked. Rachel had harbored countless crushes on guys in her school, but they were never interested in her as anything but a study partner or a long-suffering friend. Even Fabian Rourke, who used to swear that he would marry Rachel when they were in junior high school together, never so much as made a move on her, even if she found the very notion to be repellant. It wouldn't have hurt Fabian, she reasoned, to at least try to make her feel attractive...

But Robert wanted nothing except to be with her, to feed ravenously on her attention. Robert was head-over-heels in love with Rachel, and what was poignant about his devotion was the proof that he demonstrated with every waking minute. Between classes, for example, Robert would find her, no matter where she was, and walk her to her class, even if it meant being late to his own. He would write her notes upon notes, which he would delegate to her friends to pass onto her whenever they could. Of course, Rachel's friends fluctuated between being annoyed with Robert and thinking he was the most adorable boyfriend ever.

This gave Rachel something of an ego, for the first time in her life. Robert was a handsome guy who never called excessive attention to himself, and so when other girls saw how completely enraptured he was with Rachel, it brought out a "latent sexiness" (as Kelly Paper once put it) in him that might not have existed had it not been for Rachel eliciting it from underneath his guarded layers.

Robert made Rachel feel incredible about herself. He never so much as glanced at another girl when he was with her, and he knew what to say to make her feel happy. If she asked him if a certain pair of jeans made her look fat, Robert would reply, "No, the jeans are just too small. Must've shrunk in the wash. Damn cottons..." And she knew he was lying, because she although she wasn't overweight, she didn't have the slender figure that so many of her friends possessed.

But Robert was always loyal to her, and only after they had broken up, when she discovered that Robert subsequently sought comfort in the arms of the beautiful Kelly Paper-- she with eyes of blue and hair of gold, with a body to die for and a partying spirit-- that she ever felt any sense of emotional betrayal.

However, Rachel understood Robert's motives: she had left Robert for a temporary fling with Brian, a friend of Robert's. Not a very close friend, but a friend nonetheless, and Rachel knew shortly after hooking up with Brian that she had made a monumental mistake in going to him for rebound comfort.

Still, her brief affair with Brian was not without its perks. Brian was a jock, the kind of guy she never would have considered for a moment, had it not been for his unexplainable ties with the crowd they hung out with-- Fabian and Robert and Tom Fargo liked having Brian around, despite his lack of common interest with them. Brian grew up with Tom and Fabian, and had never really clicked with Robert-- this made Brian a prime candidate for Rachel's affections in the wake of her relationship with Robert.

Brian was very well-endowed, and it was the first time in her life where Rachel felt like she was giving in to mindless fun and meaningless romance. It didn't last very long-- three months, to be exact --but it was enough time for Rachel to get over the absence of Robert in her life.

And why did they break up in the first place? Because Rachel felt that, however good Robert was to her, he would never get his act together and fulfill his own potential. Robert had the foolish notion of being a filmmaker, a claim made worse by the virtue of the fact that he never so much as made a home movie on a video camera. Robert's idea of aspiring to be a movie director consisted of watching endless amounts of movies on tape and quoting the dialogue.

He dropped out of community college, kept getting fired from menial jobs, kept hanging out with Tom and Fabian and Brian, kept getting into trouble for stupid pranks and partying too hard... Rachel drew the line, and Robert crossed it one too many times. Nothing that they had together was worth the pain and ache that she felt every time she saw Robert, stoned out of his mind, drunk off of beer, ignoring her while paying all of his attention to the boys.

It was as if he was resisting change. Everyone in their circle of friends knew that the days of lounging around with nothing better to do than get wasted were waning. Robert was the only one who couldn't make the transition from adolescent to adult. And Rachel didn't want to expend her energy on trying to "change" Robert.

The truth is, she didn't think Robert could change at all.

She thought of him for a second, as she took off her pumps and wrinkled her toes into the carpet fabric. Robert had a foot fetish, and loved to play with her feet whenever she got off of work or back from her college courses. She didn't miss much about him, but sometimes she would recall how good it felt to get a foot massage from him, because he was tender and gentle and he took his time and wasn't grossed out by corns or bunions or toe jam.

Jack Hawkins, for all of his generosity and attention, didn't enjoy massaging Rachel's feet. But he made up for it in being a steady rock for her to cling to in times of trouble. Rachel wasn't a helpless case without Jack, to be sure, but she liked the fact that, if she should ever feel weak in spirit, Jack was there to help. Robert was always too self-absorbed to lend any real help when she needed it.

The only thing she would allow herself to feel towards Robert was ambivalence. God, she thought to herself as she mashed the balls of her feet into the carpet, he's probably still playing video games on the couch, smoking endless amounts of pot and drinking like a goddamn fish... and he's allergic to alcohol! What an asshole... such a waste... he could be anything he wants to be and he chooses to be a bum...

She shook her head and checked the messages on the phone. There was one from an old friend, a voice she hadn't heard in years. Upon hearing the voice, she got all excited and jotted down the number as she replayed the message again. Then, she wasted no time in returning the call.

"Council Corps, Margaret speaking."

"I'd like to speak to... Jimmy Drawers?" Rachel wondered why Fabian would ask her to refer to him by that name.

"One moment, please."

Rachel waited. When Fabian picked up the line, she began to speak quickly.

"Drawers here."

"Fabian! Fabian Rourke! It's me, Rachel!"

"Heeeeyyyyyy," Fabian said, his voice's timbre rising. "Rachel. You got my message."

"How are you?" Rachel couldn't believe she was talking to her old friend, the one guy in her entire life whom she never felt any ill will towards. Fabian was the brother that she never had-- Fabian was everyone's brother, it seemed. "God, it's been so long..."

"Yeah, I know. I'm doing good. Can't complain... but you. Still teaching?"

"Not teaching-- administrating."

"No fuckin' way! Really? God, I'm so proud of you, Rache!" He pronounced it to rhyme with the letter 'H'. "Good for you! Awesome!"

"Thanks. They promoted me last fall. No more lesson plans, no more dealing with all that crap... it's great, it's what I want."

"I hear ya. Sounds like you're doing good."

"But what about you, Fabian? What's with the alias? 'Jimmy Drawers'? Wasn't that a character from one of your stories? Are you writing still?"

"Naw, not really writing in the traditional sense... but yeah, 'Jimmy Drawers' is like my stage name, if you can call it that... it's one of many names I go by."

"Ooooh," Rachel said, in mock-awe. "You sound like you're a VIP. What are you, a spy now?"

"I wish," Fabian replied. "No, I work for Council Corps. It's a small little company, you probably have never heard of it..."

"Can't say that I have."

"Well, it doesn't matter, because the money is good, and I have fun doing whatever it is they have me doing."

"So, are you still a bachelor? Or did you finally relent and let some poor girl rope you in?"

"Believe it or not, Rache, I've been happily married for the past three years."

"OH MY GOD!!" Rachel dropped the phone and hopped around the room screaming "I can't believe it!" When she finally calmed down and got back on the phone, Fabian was laughing.

"Surprised?"

"You bet your ASS I'm surprised!" Rachel was having a fit. "Oh my God... that's so cool, Faby! I can't believe it... Man, that's some news right there..."

"Thanks. I pride myself on my ability to shock even the jaded likes of you."

"Fabian, you getting married is more than just a shock-- it's a sign of the fucking Apocalypse!" Rachel said, smiling from ear to ear. "And yet, it makes sense. I guess I'm just happy for you, kid. You deserve it. I've known you for so long, and I always wondered if you would ever lighten up and let love hit you over the head."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't easy. But Caroline, she made it a smooth transition. I want you to meet her. You'd like her, Rachel-- she's not a skank. And she's smart. And she's beautiful."

"Oh, well, now I'm jealous," Rachel said, now in a mock-flirting tone. "I thought you said you'd marry me when we got old, Fabian. What happened? I wasn't good enough for you?"

"You were too good," Fabian said. "That's why I never got between you and Robert."

Rachel was silent for a bit, thrown off by the mention of his name. "Yeah, well, that was then..."

"I always thought you and Robert were going to tie the knot."

"Me too," Rachel said, not sure if she meant it or not.

"Ever talk to him?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. Let's change the subject, okay?"

"Okay... so, talk to Brian lately?"

Rachel laughed despite herself. "Fucker... you would bring that up, wouldn't you?"

"Just teasin'. I actually ran into him not too long ago. He coaches at Wholesome High."

"GET OUT!"

"No bullshit, Rache. He teaches Phys Ed now. Fitting, ain't it?"

"I must agree."

"I also ran into Tom Fargo," Fabian continued. "He works for UPS."

"He's Brown?" Rachel asked. "Too funny."

"Yeah, it's a living. He's doing good, actually. He's married, has two kids... I mean, I never expected that guy to live past 30, so anything other than being a gutterpunk is good for Tom."

"Wow... he still doesn't have a Mowhawk, does he?"

Fabian snickered. "Only when he goes on vacation!"

The two enjoyed a laugh and remininsced about the old days, holed up in a backwater hick town like Wholesome, the kind of town that made Bakersfield, CA look like a metropolitan Mecca. They remembered being outcasts in a closed society that valued convention and conformity. It didn't take much for people like Rachel and Fabian to rebel against the status quo-- all they had to do was step slightly out of line from the established order and they were instantly on the other side of anything the students of Wholesome High stood for... and thats how they liked it, for a short time.

"God, we were such pains," Rachel said, not noticing the lapse of time.

"I know, tell me about it. Anyway, I gotta go right now, so I'd love to talk some more but... I've got your number, though, so like I said-- one of these days we'll have to go get dinner, just you and me and Caroline..."

"Oh! Dinner! You just reminded me, I have to get dinner started. Today is mine and Jack's second year anniversary as a couple!"

"Jack?"

"My boyfriend. We've been together for two years now. You have to meet him, Fabian. He's everything I ever wanted in a man."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah... but anyway, I'll let you go, because I gotta get dinner ready. But call me, Faby! We'll get together soon."

"Yeah, we can have a reunion, if you'd like. You, me, Tom, Brian... Kelly and Robert..."

"Uh, let's talk about that some other time. Right now, I think it'd be best if it was just you and me and our significant others."

"Sure, whatever you say. I'll be talking to you real soon, Rache."

"You too, Fabian...or should I say, 'Jimmy Drawers'..."

Fabian laughed as he said goodbye. But when he placed the receiver back on the phone, he paced slowly around his desk and scratched his chin.

"I'm going to have to change up my whole game plan now," Fabian said to himself. "She's got a dude... this is going to get interesting."

At that moment, Fabian received another call, directed from his secretary to his private line. It was his wife, Caroline.

"Hey, baby, what's crackin'?"

"Just wanted to call you and tell you-- I'm waiting here for you to... get off from work and come home... I'm not wearing anything as I sit here, watching scrambled porn on the telly..."

Her British accent caused Fabian to get aroused, as she talked dirty to him on the phone. She usually called him around this time and spoke in a naughty manner, but since his schedule was pretty much clear for the day...

"I'll be there in no time, sweetheart!"

Caroline hung up before Fabian could say anything else. He walked out of his spacious penthouse office and told his secretary to go home early.

As he walked to his car, Fabian figured out a solution to the dilemma he had been poring over at the conclusion of his phone call wth Rachel. But he did not share this information with anyone-- he was still formulating the details in his mind as he drove home, doing 20 miles above the speed limit, in his brand new 1998 Lexus ES300.


CHAPTER FIVE DUE THIS FRIDAY...

PARANOIA

The following amendments to my last post cannot be made unless I publish a brand new post.

I did some online Googling, and found this link regarding John Paul I, aka "The 30 Day Pope", the late John Paul II's predecessor.

And here's another take on the conspiracy theories, courtesy of Rotten.com.


Is Big Brother watching me? No matter-- it's all grist for the fiction mill... besides, Mercury is in retrograde, and these kinds of glitchy things happen during that period... however, citing astrology as a factor does nothing for my already-sketchy credibility.

IMPROVISATION

Yesterday I was trying to post this, but Blogger and The Powers That Be wouldn't let me...

Okay, so maybe I'm not really the target of a global conspiracy... but it sure seemed like it yesterday.

I was going on about the apt timing of a cable network re-running The Godfather III over the weekend. Considered by many to be the worst movie out of the entire Godfather trilogy, it also has the designation of being the least watched of the three.

If you haven't seen the third part, the plot revolves around the assassination of The Pope.

The first time I saw this movie in the theaters, I thought it was ludicrous. Compared to the power and intensity of the first two movies, Part III was strictly amateur. Much of the bad publicity surrounded Sofia Coppola's acting debut-- suffice it to say, she has (over time) proven herself a better director than thespian.

But watching it again, over the past weekend, I howled at how bad the timing was, to play this movie during the weekend that John Paul II passed away.

Then, while looking at a link devoted to Godfather trivia, I read a tidbit about how the third movie's plot was based upon the real-life mystery of Pope John Paul I's death.

I did some online Googling, and found this link regarding John Paul I, aka "The 30 Day Pope", the late John Paul II's predecessor.

As a conspiracy buff, I must admit I was ashamed and embarrassed to not have known anything in regards to this tasty conspiracy theory. And you have to realize that I used to blame the Catholic Church for all sorts of conspiracies, back in the days when my knowledge on the subject of conspiracy was limited to JFK's assassination. The blame was always placed jokingly, in a way that was meant to be provocative and outrageous-- in fact, in high school I even wrote an essay for one of my Humanities classes concerning the Roman Catholic Church's power, and received an 'A' for it... even though the essay subject had nothing to do with Catholicism.

I was on a roll yesterday. Then, Blogger shut me down. Coincidence? I think not...


*/*


Look at that Godfather link that I provided, read the trivia bits, and you'll discover something.

A lot of the most memorable scenes in the first two movies were the result of improvisation.

Yes, it's true that a screenplay written by Mario Puzo, Francis Ford Coppolla and Robert Towne (uncredited) can stand on its own, but it's the deviations from the rigid structure that give a work of art its life.

Lately, I've come to realize that my improvisational instincts are my strongest asset. In music, it's my ability to change my style up on the spot and come up with something that you actually want to hear (within minutes of the request), and also the foresight to know when an accident is a "happy" one, the kind that seems like it was prepared in advance; in writing, my strength is incorporating ideas from both pre-developed sources and my own ideas that swirl about in the primordial soup of my right brain, as I'm in the prcoess of writing; in drawing and art, I never map out what I'm going to draw beforehand-- it comes out like automatic writing, straight from the id and onto the paper or canvas...

It gives me a feeling of relief and confirms my attitude towards art when I read that a movie as masterful and complete as The Godfather utilized first takes, improv line readings, last-minute scene rewrites, and "happy accidents" to get its point across. There is something to be said for order and efficiency, but sometimes things can be done so simply, if only the people in charge of production had enough faith to take the risky leap and do something that hasn't been done before.

As a person who plays in a band where the song arrangements change every other week, I know how much trouble a person can get into if they refuse to leave something alone, if they cannot let it stand on its own. Elle keeps rewriting her songs, and she will never be satisfied with the outcome. If she wrote them with any sense of confidence, she wouldn't have to sit there and explain them to the producers, who only want to put their fingerprints on her songs so that later on they can take some credit.

The personal songs that I have written haven't changed much in the ten years since I first composed them. My crime against art is that I haven't sat down and devoted enough time to seeing them finished. But now, with the home studio, things are moving in a forward direction.

And, of course, when it comes to creating new songs, the happier the accident the better.

Okay, now I have to do some work, but I hope to have the next chapter of my online novel up before day's end. I have a lot of ideas, but ultimately I will leave it up to the improvisational spirit that overtakes me when I start to write.

Have a nice weekend, y'all...

SHUTDOWN

Blogger keeps on fucking it up for me, so I know when to take a hint.

It doesn't want me to post anything.

Whatever. See ya tomorrow.

SON OF RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL

My old roomie Jessica provided this link to a Name Generator that gives you Goth nicknames.

Mine was "Lucifer".

I have always had a thing for Goth girls. Ripped nylons, whiteface, heavy mascara, crazy hairdos and dye jobs, blood-red lipstick, long fingernails...

I used to have a crush on Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. I used to have a crush on Morticia from The Addams Family. Lily from The Munsters was also pretty hot, but I always preferred Marilyn, the "normal" daughter on that show. And let's not forget the Suicide Girls-- ay, mamasita!

I liked Goth girls so much that I had a Goth hairstyle for a while. I didn't dye my hair, because my hair is as close to black as brown can get. I looked like the Mexican Edward Scissorhands-- Eduardo de la Razor, I guess... If Edward's Creator had mixed in some genes from Julio The Gardener, then I was the result.

It worked-- Goth girls liked that shit. But after a while, I realized that I was just posing and I dropped the hair spray. Plus, Goth girls (for the most part) are fucking crazy, and I can't hang with girls who are that crazy, no matter how hot and luscious they look when done up.

After my Goth hair phase, I opted to go baldhead for a spell. I ended up looking like Caspar the Friendly Gangbanger.

I've had many different hairstyles in my life. Short, mullet, long (down to my shoulders), Mohawks/Faux-hawks, shaved on one side or all over, spiked, feathered, wind-tunnel-tested, Flattop, Marine cut, layered, parted to one side, parted to the other, parted down the middle, combed forward, combed backward... The only hairstyles I have consciously avoided are the Beatle shag, the George (named because both George Clooney and George Michael have rocked it, although I suppose it's technically called a Caesar cut), and the reverse Mohawk.

Never shaved any messages into the side of my head, but I did have a ducktail once.

I've noticed that I now have an actual hairline. It's receding, but that's to be expected. Before, I had a very small forehead, due to cowlicks that press my hairline forward instead of back. I have three noticeable cowlicks on my scalp, which has always made hairstyling a chore for me. Thanks to the ravages of time, I now have a Luke Perry forehead in the making, which is a rip-off of the James Dean.

Fuck Luke Perry. Long live James Dean. And Elvira as well....


*/*


I haven't been talking about the bands much, because Elle and Katie are no longer on speaking terms and the one with my pal Buddha only meets once every two weeks. But I'm still making music, and I'm getting a bunch of songs together for (gasp!) my own solo project...

I've had songs for years, but now that I have the home studio set-up, I can do almost anything I want to do. This time, I might just get my friends to play parts and build tracks from the ground up. It shouldn't be too hard.

I am compiling a selection of the best 4-track demos I have, and I will just chip away at them over time, make them better, re-record parts and tweak others, maybe even drop some vocals (my singing voice is nasal and reedy, but I can hit the notes)...

Maybe I'll name my solo project "Lucifer". Boy, would my parents enjoy that!

I figure, being in a band is good to keep the blood flowing, and that's about it. I should call the guys from Funkin Pie, though-- they were real cool, mellow cats, and if they haven't found a bass player by now, then I can get back into the groove with them. We'll see-- I gotta call them first.

Tonight I rehearse with Buddha and the boys-- these sessions have been taking a better turn ever since I started using the portable 4-track to tape the rehearsals. They're solid players, but we need more than once every two weeks to get our parts down.

All in all, things are good. I'm waiting for the catch...

REVENGE OF RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL

Listening to the radio show after Howard Stern, hosted by "The Triplets" (aka Frosty, Heidi and Frank), the topic of discussion was women who berate their men in public.

I listened in, because I am curious as to why men put up with that crap. Just as I would tell a woman who lets her man berate her in public to stand up to the clod, likewise I suggest that men tell their women to lay off when they start treating them like imbecilic little kids around other people.

This reminded me of a story that I was told about seven years ago, shortly after I was free from the shackles of high school and wandering aimlessly, dropping out of community college and not wanting to work.

A great female friend of mine who was working at the Nordstrom's in Northridge called me one day and asked me if I was still seeing Eve. This friend, who I shall dub "Rose", had been my pal ever since the first week of high school. She was also the one who convinced me to go to Prom, even though I had no money, no date, and no intention of going.

I ended up selling the body of a 1967 Volkswagen Karmen Ghia for $200 in order to get money for the Prom tickets... and I asked Eve to go with me. So Rose knew who Eve was but didn't know that she and I had parted ways.

"The reason why I asked," Rose said to me over the phone, "was because I was at work the other day, and I heard this woman bitching at someone. I thought it was a mother scolding her kid. I turned around and saw Eve, with some sad-faced guy, and she was ordering him around like she was his mother!"

"Really?" I replied.

Rose started to laugh as she recounted the tale. "It was so funny. She was all like, 'get over here right now, godammit' and the guy was just, like, comatose... And she didn't recognize me at all. When she came up to the counter to pay, I was tempted to ask her if she knew you, but she was being such a cunt that I..."

"Oh, man, you should've asked her!" I said. "I would've sacrificed my left nut to see that one!"

That image, among many others, stuck in my mind for a long time, and helped me to get over Eve as much as I could. Then, with recent developments, I forgot about them. But the radio show today reminded me of the nature of Eve and Dick's relationship: mainly, she bossed him around, and he ate it up because she was two years older than him and had never had a girlfriend as fine as Eve, ever.

So it's telling that he ended up cheating on her, then got into a massive fistfight with her, only to regret it all and stalk her afterwards. That's why I wouldn't be surprised if she went back to him. You see, they had a two-way abusive relationship, and as far as I knew Eve was far more abusive to Dick than the other way around.

That's why, when Eve told me the story about their breakup, as angry as I was, I knew there was more to it than what she told me. Yes, it was brutal what Dick did to her, but it also sounds to me like he'd had enough of her bossing him around.

And I think that's what it all boils down to, with girls like Eve, whom I seem to attract like flies on shit. As cool and mellow and laid-back as I am, I will not let a woman treat me like a little kid. I don't dig being bossed around, and it has nothing to do with being macho-- it has to do with being an Aquarius.

Whether it is Eve or Jeanie or Amy Coates, I've had my share of controlling women. I've also had my share of passive women, and my share of even-tempered women, and all I can say is: I need to stop fucking with the controllers... they're the ones that make me upset the most.

Eve can't boss me around, but she knows I care about her, so she is punishing me, and like a fool I sit here and mope over it. But I am stubborn, so I will never let her know what she is doing to me. I have my pride, so even as I miss her and wish she were here with me, I also know that there are plenty of women out there who aren't trying to boss me around.

I need to find them, flirt with them, and spend my time with them, to get my mind off of someone like Eve, who enjoyed having her ass kissed non-stop for almost a decade. I can understand how hard it must be to go back to being just a regular girl like anyone else, even if she is beautiful. In fact, the beauty thing is a curse-- when time and age catch up with her, what's she going to do then?

I am in a much better mood this morning.


*/*


I tried to paint last night, but I need more time and preparation. I have been told that, despite having no experience or background in painting, I am able to contribute to the UCLA Feminist Majority project after all... thanks to Jana, my former insurance agent and one-time fling.

Jana was a nice girl but she came on way too strong and it scared me a bit. It didn't help matters that she and I spent our first weekend together on mushrooms. When I came down from the trip, I had a different view of her, and I avoided her afterwards. I feel bad about it now, because it's not like me to let the effects of a trip dictate who I am attracted to or not, but evidently that's what happened with me. Time has passed and worn off the effects of that particular trip, so I figure it would be cool to call her up again and see what's going on... not romantically, just as friends.

And hey, she is still cool with me, if she is getting me in on projects such as the Juarez auction, where my painting will be auctioned off to raise money for a rape crisis center in Juarez, Mexico, the site of over 400 murdered women, all under mysterious circumstances. I didn't think I could contribute because there were lots of qualifications to be met, but Jana pulled some strings and got me in.

Now all I have to do is paint a picture that someone would want to bid money on... no pressure there at all... naw, none at all...

RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL STRIKES AGAIN

Have you ever just succumbed to self-loathing so much that you could see yourself driving your car off the edge of a cliff on Mulholland Drive, letting it careen and float in the air, dead and weightless, until it comes crashing down, incinerating you and its contents within seconds of impact?

Have you ever stopped and thought about how pointless the whole game is, how meaningless every day becomes if you haven't done at least one thing to reclaim the day for yourself?

Have you ever thought about how senseless it is to be in love and not know it, to not give in for fear of being hurt? Isn't it more painful to not give in to the feelings that claw at you from inside, the emotions of desire and lust and wish fulfillment? Is it better to be disappointed and correct, or satisfied and incorrect?

Why do we fight the feelings? Why do we fight with the ones we care about?

Why can't we all just realize that this world is short on allies and filled to the brim with enemies who would love to see us fall? And why can't we see that our friends are not our enemies, and that without our friends our real enemies will trip us up and devour us?

Why?

I am in a funk. My mood fell. Elation led to inertia, and I am ready to get out of here and breathe some air, smoke some dope, say "Fuck all" to convention and normalcy and tradition and all that confining jazz, and I want to go out tonight and make an beast of myself, to dull the pain of being a man...

That's easy to accomplish-- I do it all the time.

Tomorrow, I will be in a better mood, I promise...

THE RETURN OF RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL

I've been resisting the urge to comment on The Minutemen because I wanted to see them fuck things up on their own. Although the following link doesn't qualify as a bona-fide fuck-up, it just goes to show what a little mob rule can do to the part of the brain that controls common sense.

They're setting off sensors that alert the real Border Patrol of intruders... they've just made the Border Patrol's work a lot harder.

Dumbasses....


*/*


The only song I ever liked from New Order is "True Faith". A friend of mine referred me to Launch.com when I was trying to describe the video for the song-- my friend, who is a big fan of New Order, had never seen the weird video clip for "True Faith"!

How do I even begin to describe the video? Let's just say that, when I first saw the video on a local TV show called Video One, (hosted by Richard Blade of World Famous KROQ fame) it gave me nightmares!

There's these weird guys with face paint, dressed in oversized foam costumes. They resemble life-sized versions of alien chess pieces. They do these odd dances, jump on trampolines like angry Smurfs, use sign language to deliver the lyrics, engage in choreographed violence, and slap each other to the electro beat. Occasionally, there's a shadowy clip of Bernard Sumner singing into the mic passionately, and short snippets of the band on stage.

Watching the video and hearing the song again, I was totally moved. Great fucking song, that "True Faith": Awesome chord progression, haunting melody, dreamlike vocals and mystifying lyrics. I'd like to remake that song one day.

That song, Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls", and Talk Talk's "It's My Life" (covered recently by No Doubt) remind me of the late, great Video One. All of those aforementioned songs had weird-ass videos, now that I think about it.

Video One was awesome-- in addition to videos by early INXS, Duran Duran, and The Cure, they would play rare Prince clips and live concert footage from the Purple Rain tour.

Aw shit... I'm waxing nostalgic, aren't I? FUCK!


*/*


Anyone been to the official Simpsons website? The link is www.thesimpsons.com, and it's really fucking great! There's an interactive section with profiles of all of the major characters from the show, and... well, I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, if you're bored at work, this website will keep you mildly entertained... especially if you're a Simpsons junkie like I am!

RANDOM THOUGHT SWIRL

Yesterday I made off-color jokes at the Pope's expense.

Jokes, mind you. Taste aside, they were jokes.

This morning, I turned on the radio to listen to Howard Stern as I dressed. One of his call-in guests was some woman from a website known as God Hates Gays, and its sister website, God Hates America.

This intolerant bitch agreed with my assessment of the Pope, except she wasn't kidding. She also felt that Terri Schiavo, Mel Gibson, and anyone in world history (including our current President and Bill Clinton) belongs in Hell.

The only exception she could give was Abraham. Oddly enough, she also condemned Jews and Muslims, both whom are adherents to faiths spawned by Abraham.

Such is the way of the ignorant.

Of course, Howard applied his salacious interview technique to this shrew, asking her if she ever masturbated and telling her point blank that he thinks she belongs in Hell... but all this woman did was say, "At least you acknowledge there is a Hell..."

Strange, bitter woman...

It got me thinking about what Hell is. In my mind, I think of Hell as a state of spiritual disharmony, rather than a geographical location. Hell, in my mind, is less about fire and brimstone and more about our personal demons fleshed out and amplified, a sort of madness perhaps but not necessarily a mental illness, since we will supposedly not have any human faculties in the afterlife.

Anyway, according to my logic, that woman is living in Hell already. And when we return to the grave, her soul will go nowhere.

As for me, if there is a Hell below, will I go there because of my jokes about the Pope? Or will I go because I haven't balanced my karma before my demise?

I personally think that there is no Heaven, only Hell. Heaven is here, on Earth, where we are partaking of the pleasures that are all around us. Life is Heaven, if you ask me, unless you live in spiritual Hell...

What about all those people who suffer during this life, you may ask? Well, no matter what they are going through, they would prefer to be alive than dead, unless they are living in some sort of Hell where they want to end their life. I can understand that perspective, having been in that state once before.

I don't think Terri Schiavo wanted to live the rest of her days as a vegetable, and so she was set free from this mortal coil. That is living death, and I doubt she felt a thing as she wasted away in her hospital bed.

Such deep thoughts to be having as I dress on a Tuesday morning, no?


*/*


Last night, while perusing through my tapes, I found these mix cassettes from the late '80's, from a company known at the time as Personics.

The concept was simple: you could make a mix tape of your favorite artists by going to a record store, paying a few bucks, and selecting from their menu of singles. The Personics in-store set-up resembled an ATM machine, and you could scroll around and find your artist and put a song on a personalized tape.

I made four tapes before they pulled the system, and I looked at the selections I picked as I rummaged through the tapes.

My tapes included songs by The Velvet Underground, Iggy & The Stooges, Love, X, They Might Be Giants, T. Rex, Roky Erikson and The Aliens, New York Dolls, and Thelonious Monster.

I recall that, at the time, one of the reasons why Personics never took off was because they didn't have enough popular artists in their roster. It was mostly artists like the ones I listed above, or "golden oldies" groups like The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons. There was no Bon Jovi or Huey Lewis on the playlist because those artists wanted big bucks for the rights to use their songs.

I gotta say: Personics was pretty hip, to have all those artists I listed in their system. In fact, I can safely say that Personics introduced me to these obscure artists, whose cult followings allowed them to experience revivals and comebacks in the ensuing years. But I probably would have never bought a single album from these groups had it not been for the Personics system letting me preview the songs before I bought them.

Nowadays, you can't even find half of these artists in record stores. But back in 1986, I could make a quality tape for about a dollar a song, and I didn't have to take the risk of spending my limited allowance budget on an album that looked cool but didn't deliver sonically.

As I got older, I started spending mad dollars on music, but back then I wasn't a record buff. I was just beginning to find my own tastes, apart from what my family and friends recommended.

A system like Personics is antiquated and charmingly obsolete today, what with MP3s ruling the roost when it comes to music selection. But I owe it big, because it introduced me to the music that I ended up devoting all of my time and money towards purchasing.

If Personics were around today, it would be stocked with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake bullshit. The kids would eat it up, and bands like Suicide or Ritual Tension or Television would not be on the list at all.

That's one of the reasons why the '80's sucked, in my opinion.


*/*


Listening to Jack 93 this past weekend, I realized that it really is just Arrow 93 with an updated format. I suppose that KCBS-FM, the station that aired the Arrow format, scoured their playlists and purged all of the songs that were not in demand, and re-stocked them with songs that get played on Star 98.7, KROQ, and KIIS-FM. The occurrence of '80's one-hit-wonders in the Jack 93 rotation is starting to scale back, and old Arrow staples such as Aerosmith and ZZ Top are resurfacing.

What was it that The Who sang in the song "Won't Get Fooled Again"? I think it was:

"Meet the new boss/ Same as the old boss..."

I think I like Jack 93, but only as long as they keep playing songs like Supertramp's "Goodbye Stranger" and cut back on songs like "Keep The Fire Burning" by REO Speedwagon.

These are the random thoughts swirling about in my brain...

INTERSECTION

The corner of Sepulveda Boulevard and Ventura Boulevard has figured prominently in my life for as long as I can remember.

In Junior High, the Sherman Oaks Galleria was the hang-out spot. About half a mile away, at the Malibu Castle miniature golf course, I enjoyed my first kiss in 7th grade, via the elusive Franceska Norman.

This was the Galleria of Fast Times At Ridgemont High fame, with the Hot Dog On A Stick girls churning butter up and down, their ridiculous red-yellow-and-blue outfits causing me to erupt into derisive laughter...

When I started working in radio, the office was across the street from the Galleria. Within walking diatnce, there was Ruben's Red Hot, the best hot dog place in the Valley. For years we used to watch outside of the bus windows, on the way to school, and see them constructing Ruben's, using a 17-foot section of the Chicago El Train. Then, as an adult, I started eating there. They know me so well there that I get freebies.

I mention this intersection because today, as I went to Ruben's for possibly the millionth time, I remembered that Eve told me not too long ago that she used to see me walking down the street to get food at Ruben's. She was across the street, at the "new and improved" Galleria, eating in the outdoor section of The Cheesecake Factory.

Funny how she used to watch me walking. Funny how I saw her a few times, and walked the other way. Funny how we were in the same vicinity, but not on speaking terms, for years.

There was the time I crossed the street and saw Eve honking at the car in front of her. That car in front of her was stopping so that I could cross, and when we made eye contact, I laughed. She told me later that she laughed also, and that Dick, her man at the time, didn't like it at all.

I saw her this morning, on my way to work. I stopped by her office to drop off a portable USB memory stick, with free space up to a measly 128 MB. It's still enough, though, for her to take the animation files and transport them to me whenever she has the time.

I was still reeling from her rejection of me around her birthday, but after I returned her gift (she didn't even know I had bought her one) I felt a little better. She was supposed to call me this past weekend, but I figured she was still working on the project and also dealing with her family, who no doubt treated her to countless things for her birthday.

I walked into her office. She saw me and already she had her excuses ready.

"I haven't been ignoring you..."

I laughed to myself. I didn't think she was ignoring me at all-- she'd told me last week, rather bluntly, that she would be busy with this and that.

"...it's just that my phone died."

She showed me her cel phone, the message screen blackened and cracked.

"I dropped it in a puddle."

I didn't tell her that I hadn't been calling her since we last spoke.

"I stopped by your place twice yesterday..."

I wasn't around. In the morning I had breakfast with Down Low and his girl Shaqueeda; then I made brunch with my cousin for his birthday; then I went to the studio and hung out with Elyse and her friends for a few hours (another blog entry for another day); and finally I made my way over to Paulie's house, to watch ther latest dailies on the animation...

"...but you were out."

She looked at me as if to say, "Okay, you got me-- I care about you, all right?"

I didn't have to say anything. She thought she was reading it all on my face, but really-- I had only planned to walk in, drop off the USB, and leave. We ended up talking for a while.

"Everything technological is fucking up on me lately," she said. "And I'm feeling a little sick, with the flu, I think..."

I finally said something.

"When you're ready with the animation files, bring them by."

She looked at me as she always does, with one eyebrow raised. I wanted to tell her all sorts of things, but I thought better of it. My silence was a defense, a way for me to figure her out without having to make a fool of myself, like I did last week...

I thought of Eve as I walked to Ruben's for lunch. She's not watching me now, I thought. At least, not in a literal sense... but she said she stopped by my place twice yesterday? That was uncalled for... and I'm glad she did... if she really did, that is...

I don't know what will become of us, but I am trying to understand it. The whole situation defies comprehension, but then again no logic can apply itself to attraction and its many tangents.

Today is a beautiful day, and as I walked back to the office I reflected on how much of my life has been spent somewhere near this corner of the Valley.

I wish she was still watching me from afar...

FEAR NOT DEATH

I haven't been watching the news lately-- is the Pope sick or something?

He's WHAT?

Oh.

Well, I must say... the one good thing is that he asked everybody to not be sad for his passing. And I'll take him up on that.

HOORAY!!

What's that? Going to meet God and Jesus? Stand on their right-hand side?

Says who?

The Bible? Okay... and I take it you have empirical proof of this, right?

No concrete evidence? Then who's to say that the Pope isn't in hell right now, burning for the sins of his fellow priests, pedophiles that they are? Maybe he's burning for all eternity because he did nothing as hundreds of thousands of children suffered sexual abuse under his watch.

I mean, I know the Bible doesn't say anything about that, except for that one passage about all human beings being sinful, and no one is worthy of the kingdom of heaven and all that...

I take it that applies to the Pope as well...

Dude, I feel bad for the guy who impersonates the Pope, in movies and on TV. What's that poor guy going to do, now that John, Paul, George and Ringo are dead? OOps, I mean John Paul...

But seriously-- anyone give one damn about that guy? How's he going to feed his family? It wouldn't be in good taste for him to portray a dead Pope, now would it?

I hope the new Pope does something about those child-molesting priests-- they're really dragging down the image of the Church, you know? I mean, that's just my humble opinion, but...

How do they pick the new Pope? Rock Paper Scissors? Eeny Meeny Miney Moe? One Potato Two Potato? Shouldn't he have a birthmark on the inside of his thigh that designates him as The Chosen One?

He suffered heart and kidney failure caused by a urinary tract infection... funny how the Pope, a celibate (I presume), died from an infection usually associated with unsafe sex with prostitutes...

Okay, I've blasphemed enough for today-- time to get to work. But I'll be back later.

"THE NIGHT SHIFT" (work in progress, chapter three)

Two men were sitting in the Control Room. Various TV monitors, computer plasma flatscreens, adult-sized mainframes and portable laptops were strewn every which way. The flickering of various satellite feeds filled the room with a blue-tinged hue, as different audio feeds interpolated in and out of aural consciousness.

Spud was playing a game of Pinball on his computer. Spud was young, in his mid-twenties, with horn-rimmed glasses and a shocking tuft of bright blonde hair jettisoning from his balding scalp. He had his mind on several tasks at once, and so his pinball gaming wasn't as efficient as it could have been.

Next to Spud, with his eye on a growing list of incoming and outgoing relay closures, sat Drake Nimbus, a weathered veteran of decades upon decades of technical training. His long red hair pulled back into a ponytail, he resembled a grizzled-out rocker more than he did a shift supervisor.

Spud and Drake were the night shift. No one else was around, save for the extensive security guard coverage and a few other owls hooting about in their cubicle nests.

"I got a mix CD," Spud said to Drake, after his last ball dribbled down the pinball drain. "Wanna hear it?"

"Sure," Drake said. "But not too loud. We need to be alert tonight. Boss' orders."

"That's what they say every night," Spud said. "And every night, we wait around for things to happen.... and nothing ever does."

"Need to be alert," is all Drake said in reply.

Spud popped in his MP3 CD. The disc spun around as the player read its contents. Then, it started to play a song. "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" by DEVO.

"What the hell is this?" Drake asked, laughing. "You always have some far-out shit to play."

"This is old shit, man. It ain't new." Spud sipped on his coffee mug.

"Sounds new," Drake said.

"That's 'cause it's DEVO," Spud said. "They're my favorite band ever. This song reminds me of work. Listen to the lyrics."

The song sounded like a group of broken machines trying to tap out some sort of primitive orchestration.

"Weird shit," Drake said. "I like it-- but it's weird. All that new wave shit passed me by. Back in the day, I was too busy listening to AC/DC and doing coke off of chicks' asses to deal with that shit."

Spud sang along with the words. "Afraid nobody around here.... understands my potato..."

"Listen to you. Songs about potatoes? No wonder they call you Spud."

"You know what DEVO is all about, don't you, Drake?"

"They're a band. What's there to be all about?"

"The whole concept of de-evolution. The human race is moving forward towards entropy. Things fall apart, that kind of stuff. Only they wrap it up in quackery. Books by German authors about how apes ate other apes' brains and acquired self-awareness, spawning the human race... It's funny stuff."

"Now I know why you like it so much," Drake smiled.

Drake saw a closure that didn't come back. He immediately got on the phone to Denver.

"Yeah, Drake here. How ya doin', Tom? Relay 001 didn't come back. Just lettin' you know. Thanks a bunch. Talk to you at the top of the hour."

"Tell 'im I said what's up." Spud sang another line from the song: "Smart Patrol... nowhere to go... suburban robots that monitor reality..."

"Spud sends his regards, Tom." Drake laughed at whatever it was Tom Collins said on the other line. "Later." Drake hung up the hotline.

"Yeah, Bart Ailes won't be happy to know his local commercials aren't airing properly," Spud remarked. "But then again, all he has to do is tell his listeners that UFOs are responsible, right?"

"Hey, it's all entertainment," Drake said. "You ever hear about that classic War Of The Worlds broadcast in the '30's?"

"Hell yeah," Spud said, enthusiasm swelling in his oversized brain. "Orson Welles. People thought it was real."

"Radio back then was the only form of mass media," Drake said, in an instructing tone. He liked talking to Spud because Spud had a thirst for knowledge. No factoid was too trivial for Spud to pass on, and Drake had enough useless information inside his eggshell skull to spread like anthrax. "Imagine if there was a news interruption in the middle of a show like the season finale of Survivor, telling you that a space craft was found in some rural hick town somewhere. You'd think it was real, right?"

"I don't believe anything I see on TV or hear on the radio anymore, especially from doing this line of work," Spud said. "I'd go online and try and find corroborating reports first."

"Yeah, well, not everyone is like you, Spud. They'd probably buy it. The bigger the lie..."

"We've been over this before," Spud said.

"You know, Bart Ailes has a copy of that broadcast, on his site somewhere. We should download it and give it a listen."

"I've heard it. Boring."

"Boring? Dated, yes, but boring? Come on..."

"For its time, I'm sure it was riveting. But nowadays... you'd need to sell it more. Plus, I read the book. It's much better."

"The movie, with... what's his name... Gene Barry. Awesome."

"Yeah, that movie is sick. I used to get nightmares from the way those creepy aliens looked."

"Sick... is that the new word in vogue?"

"Actually, it's already out of style," Spud said. "But that doesn't mean I don't use it anymore. Fuck, I still say 'tight' and 'dope' all the time."

"Fresh stupid wack funky?" Drake didn't understand rap lingo.

The conversation dipped as Spud sipped on a Fresca and ate a ham sandwich that he'd packed for himself. Drake wasn't hungry-- rather, he was in constant pain, the residual aftermath of a near-fatal motorcycle crash that almost rendered him unable to walk over ten years ago. What he really needed was some pain killers, but he hated prescription pills and didn't want to be drinking on the job.

"Speaking of dope," Drake asked Spud, "you got any of that shit you had last week?"

"After I finish this sandwich, we'll go on break. Call up Syd, so he can watch the screens," Spud said, in between bites.

On "The Bart Ailes Show", the host was having a monotone discussion with his guest on the topic of quantum music.


BART: So you can actually hear what a quantum system sounds like?

GUEST: You need a quantum computer for that, but yes, Bart, you can hear it.

BART: How does it sound? What's it sound like?

GUEST: The thing is, in the presence of an observer, the music changes. What I hear by myself will not be the same as what you hear when you enter the room, nor will it sound the same when I leave the room, or if someone else enters, and so on.

BART: How do they track it? I'm no physicist, but I am in radio, and I know that in order to even playback something from any acoustical system, you need to at least track it onto some sort of...

GUEST: A special MIDI interface was built that was capable of containing up to 100 billion tracks.

BART: 100 billion MIDI tracks? Why so many?

GUEST: Because of Schrodinger's Equation, the number of different sound combinations that can be generated is endless... infinity plus one, if you will. Once the quantum computer has been programmed to spin variations on the Equation, it needs to be housed somehow. The MIDI interface allows for seemingly endless virtual tracking...

BART: The guest is Earl B. Hawkins, and the topic is quantum physics as applied to music and sound. You're listening to the Bart Ailes Show, and we'll be right back after these messages...


The circuit relay went out and refused to return once again. This time Drake got a call from Bart Ailes himself.

"Nevada's on the line," Drake said to Spud, as he motioned to Syd, the backup engineer, to wait outside of the Control Room. "Mr. Ailes? Drake Nimbus here. I know, it seems like it's our fault, but it's not. Denver doesn't know either. An anomaly, I suppose. I'm going to have to ask you to run the commercials by hand. The cart machine still works, right? I know, it's almost the 21st Century... Hey, blame it on Y2K, what can I tell ya? We'll have it fixed in no time."

Drake hung up and shook his head. "Fuck Bart Ailes. I need to smoke. Let's go, Spud. We'll handle this later. Nothing we can do from our end. It's up to HAARP to handle this one now... Syd, come inside and watch this for about half an hour, will ya?"


*/*


Andre's in Burbank was Robert's favorite place to have breakfast. He had a crush on one of the waitresses, a woman named Jojo in her mid-thirties, Vietnamese or Thai possibly, with luscious curves and a bodacious bottom. He always sat outside, so he could smoke a cigarette, and she always greeted him and flirted in her stunted, broken English.

"You order coffee?" Jojo asked him, as he waited for Fabian Rourke to meet him.

"You know how I do it, Jojo," Robert said, smiling.

"No cream?"

"No cream. And I'll have the special-- I already know what I want to eat."

"Always same," Jojo said. "Why not pancakes? Why not waffle? French toast?"

"Someday," Robert said, making cow eyes with Jojo and feeling attractive. She walked back inside, glancing at Robert over her shoulder as she strutted off with his order.

At that moment, a tall, lanky man with glasses and a beard sat down in front of Robert.

"This place better be good," the man said, daring Robert to recognize him.

"Fabian?"

"Good guess," Fabian Rourke said, smiling. "What's up?" The two stood up, gave each other a long bearhug, and sat back down.

"Fuckin' A," Robert said. "Good ol' Fabian Rourke. Shit. You look different. Once again, you look different. You look like... a hippie. You look like a fucking hippie."

"I like to change my style every six months," Fabian said, leaning on the table with one elbow. "Keeps me on my toes."

Robert laughed. That was something his father, James River, used to say: "Keep 'em on their toes, son!"

"So," Robert asked, "how you been?"

"Well, despite my appearance, I'm doing great, Robert. Work has been keeping me busy. So busy, in fact, that I need help. And now that you've got some technical skills, I can hire you on. I always knew you had it in you, man, but you needed to float on your own for a while."

"It's a trip," Robert said. "Who'd have ever thunk that I'd be doing what I do? I would've never guessed it, in a million years."

"Well, your dad was a musician, and he liked to dabble in sound recording. Face it-- you were born with a predisposition for it. It's in your blood, man, don't deny it."

Robert pointed at Fabian, grinning. "Yeah, but you... you're the man, Fabian. I'm not surprised to see you're doing good. You're the smartest person I ever met, man."

Fabian still didn't know how to take a compliment, even after all of these years. "Anyway, let me tell you what I do right now. I've chilled out on the road managing-- I can only take so much trendy Top 40 pap before I have an aneurysm. Now, I run programming for Council Corp."

"Council Corp? Sounds important."

"It's just the company name. I have no ideas what it means. I just do what they tell me. I run ISPs, satellite receivers, fiber-optic feeds, all sorts of information engines and data sources for Council Corp. They have their thumbs in every piece of the communications pie: radio, TV, cable, satellite, the Web, telephone lines, you name it... if it can be compressed and streamed, we manage the data flow. In fact, the place you work for-- we handle their T1 lines. We stream their shows through our network centers."

"No shit?"

"You work on Rayburn's show, right? He's one of them. Bart Ailes? Through us. Dr. Lepinski? Through us. Biff Hadley? Us. All of those guys at your network, their shows go through us in some way, shape or form."

"I didn't know that."

"Well, now you do. And in a way, I've been keeping tabs on you, Robert."

"Tabs?"

"I mean, I've been following your work history from afar. Ever since I stopped going out on the road, I've been watching your progress. You're doing good, as far as I can see. I like what the reports tell me."

"This is weird, man. You've been watching me work?"

"Not literally, you dumbass! I ask around. Tom Collins, in Denver? He knows you, he knows your people. You ever talk to him?"

"Once, a long time ago. I came in on Father's Day to fill in. I had to call Denver every hour to confirm that the signal was still up."

"Well, you might be having to talk to him a lot more if this all goes through. I'm just waiting to get the green light, but I want you in the bullpen, warming up. You'll be working with two guys who are real good at what they do. Drake Nimbus and Charles Francis. I know them well, they're basically my crew. They'll train ya. Unfortunately, my present duties keep me very occupied, so you won't see me that much. But you won't need me around all the time."

"What exactly will I be doing?" Robert asked, as Jojo came out with his breakfast order.

"Babysitting," Fabian replied. "Sonic babysitting. If you get bored, you can read a book or something."

"Sounds good to me," Robert said. He started to eat his meal.

"You're okay with working nights, aren't you, Robert?"

"I can do it. It won't take long for me to adjust."

Fabian ordered a Denver Omelette with pancakes instead of home fries. He then offered to pay for both his and Robert's meals up front, and gave Jojo a fat tip. She smiled and batted her long eyelashes appreciatively.

"Man, it's gonna be so good, having you on the team. You won't regret this, Robert."

Fabian smiled, the sincerity and goofiness showing through his scruffy beard and Coke-bottle glasses. Robert couldn't help but laugh, as a mouthful of egg almost bursted from his grinding jaw.


CHAPTER FOUR COMES NEXT FRIDAY-- Have A Nice Weekend, Folks!!

DON'T KNOW JACK

There's a new radio station on the air in L.A. It took the place of Arrow 93, the classic rock station. It's calling itself Jack 93, probably because they jack the past Billboard charts for their playlists.

Taking a cue from such successful experiments as Pirate Radio (remember that piece of shit, people?) and Indie 103 (which has been doing OK, despite the reliance on emo crap), the ad campaign has a lot of 'tude: Their slogan is, "We play what we want!"

I guess what "they" want is songs from the '80's and early '90's, with the occasional contemporary hit to spice things up.

I know every song on their playlist. When I worked at the other radio network, we had some "flashback" shows that catered to these very songs. Basically, any song that "Weird" Al Yankovic ever made into a parody at the height of his fame is on the playlist.

Actually, I would rather listen to an all-"Weird" Al station than Jack 93, but for the nostalgia factor you can't beat this new station.

I also know every song on the playlist because I grew up on these songs. Unfortunately, these are the songs of my youth. As much as I would like to claim that all I listened to was hardcore punk and college rock in the early '80's, the fact is I was in grade school when these chestnuts first aired. Therefore, I was into Top 40 radio. That meant Rick Dees, KIIS FM, and songs like After The Fire's version of Falco's "Der Kommissar" or Scandal's "The Warrior", featuring the other Patti Smyth, the one who spelled her surname with a y...

The cool shit came in 1984, when I discovered rap, punk, and Prince all in the same summer. Up until that point, it was The Greg Kihn Band, Cyndi Lauper, and The Eurythmics (who, it must be said, were actually way cooler than we preteens deserved)...

Anyway, maybe I will break down and buy an iPod... not for the cool gadgetry, but for the Podcasting ability. Then, I will launch an all-"Weird" Al station. The first broadcast day will consist solely of his polka medleys. I don't know, something about the way "Hey Jude" sounds with a polka backdrop... it's positively magical!

One last thing: I consider the '80's the worst time in my entire life. I was still under the impression that I should "fit in", and everything I did or thought was cool turned out to be a cheap, Reagan-era hoax.

I think movies like Donnie Darko and Napoleon Dynamite are reactions to this curious strain of rose-colored fondness for that decade. It's as if those movies were made for people like me, who really remember how awful the '80's were. Living through it once was enough for me, thank you very much.

I hate the '80's with a passion, see no need for a revival of that infernal decade, and yet here I am, driving in my car, tuning in to Jack Move 93 because I still have Arrow programmed on my stereo. Sometimes a song that I really like-- Dexy's Midnight Runner's "Come On Eileen", for example -- will play, and I will have to hold my contempt for another selection... perhaps "St. Elmo's Fire" by an artist that even a useless-triviahead like myself has forgotten the name of, or maybe even "Young Hearts" by Rod Stewart, the kind of song that makes you wonder if "Maggie May" was a fluke.

God, I hate the past... so much pain... time to copy some vinyl onto CD...