Yeah, that's Kevin Finney's wife Liesl (rhymes with Diesel and just as tasty...). And yeah, my tongue's headed for the nose.

Good eatin'.

Look, Ma! No hair. But it's coming back, stronger than ever...

"I don't wanna feel this way - won't somebody take away this feeling
I'm looking at a open sky, it's like my roof has got no ceiling"
Good Cop, Bad Cop / Everything But The Girl

Beautiful song. Thanks to her for turning me on to a lot of great music.

For the first time ever, played a grand total of two (short, at that) sets at the Arena. Was free to go by 1:30 -- stayed and chatted a bit with Stuart McNair about some website stuff, and then left.

Can't get things out of my head. Damn my brain. I love it and hate it.

"Maybe you'll kill yourself
Before I get a turn
Maybe I'll fall in love
And never learn"
Silverchair / Black Tangled Heart

Sleep. I know, it's early -- but fuck it. Sleep. No more conscious thought. Time to let the dreamstate take over and play those little games it plays so well...

My head is a jumble of thoughts.

No, literally. No metaphorical speaking going on here. Atop my shoulders sits a jumble of thoughts.

Coherent at times but then jumping. One to another to another.

"I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had"
- Tears for Fears / Mad World

What do I want? she asked. I want the same as everyone else: happiness. I want to live. I want fulfillment. I want knowledge and the woman of my dreams. I want things to be easier than they are. I want less questions and more answers. I want challenge and opportunity.

Somewhere in there is the answer, but not the one she wanted, nor the one that I meant to give.

"Dream on
(Dream on, dream on...)
Dream another way
'cause I know
(I know, I know...)
When the wind blows your name
...It's a shame...
Things are strange but that's OK
On a rainy Sunday afternoon...
In your place
In our place
In the swarm
So from the great plains
...From the void...
I will wait for you
I!
I will wait for you...
I will!!
I will wait for you
I will wait alone.
Ain't it strange?
People change but that's OK
It's another night here, and all I'm thinking about is you.
In your place
In our place
In the swarm
So from the great plains
...From the void...
Yeah, from the deep field
...From the void...
I will wait for you...
I!
I will wait for you...
I will!!
I will wait for you"
- Sunday Afternoon / Devin Townsend

Am I heading for another brick wall (worse, a wall I'm all too familiar with)? Where do you draw the line? What makes the journey across the desert worth the pain and trouble? Perhaps the desert is not so hot as it appears -- perhaps experience and common knowledge are wrong this time, and the desert is actually a boardwalk filled with cotton candy and lovers holding hands and children with kites.

Life isn't fair. Life is what it is. I say this without malice or spite. It is what it is. Vonnegut said, "So it goes."

"I closed my eyes several times..."

Am I too old to think like this, to act like this, to even consider things like this? I don't know who or what I am, where I'm going, what I'm doing. And maybe that's more normal than I think it is. It's okay, that's for sure -- I want to say it has to be, but it doesn't. It just is.

And maybe one day this Zen thing will come more naturally to me.

"Ah, these are the days
Let them roll as they roll
And be all you are
Because you're beautiful
Material"
-Material / Devin Townsend

What I want is someone beautiful. Someone with a creative spark (a fire will suffice). Someone with talent and ambition and dreams. Someone who is misunderstood and understands. Someone who is lost. Passion, life. Danger. A sense of right and wrong and the knowledge that there's a time and place for everything.

I wish it were otherwise, but I never know how to define what I've always dreamed of until it's in front of me. And I won't say that I've found what I've always dreamed of, but I will say that I no longer believe that it's impossible. The set defines the subset, but the subset does nothing more than imply the whole set.

"Feels like reckless driving when we’re talking
It’s fun while it lasts, and it’s faster than walking
But no one’s going to sympathize when we crash
They’ll say you hit what you head for, you get what you ask
And we’ll say we didn’t know, we didn’t even try
One minute there was road beneath us, the next just sky"
-Falling is Like This / Ani DiFranco

I wish it were simpler sometimes, but this -- this gnawing jumping velvet razor stuck in my throat is living. I would risk everything to feel this way every day forever. Alive. Awake in a dream that I'll remember tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Does it feel dangerously on edge because I'm not accustomed to it, or because I'm getting that vertigo I get when the ground is a lot further away than it should be?

I want to scream and run and laugh. It's not a hysterical feeling -- there's an undercurrent of calm, the anti-riptide. I am pushed and pulled, to shore and out to sea, and relaxed and right where I should be.

"It's beautiful, the way it's meant to be
Beautiful, but it don't do shit for me...
So peel away a little skin and choke upon the bone
And ain't it funny how, after trying to find my way home,
I'm in the middle now, and I won't get lost again."
-Stagnant / Devin Townsend

I've never been here before, but I recognize the place. Is that dream memory haunting me, or have I really been here and just don't know it? And is the here important, or where I 'm going?

"it doesn't matter to me where i am; it is with whom i am that matters"

You had me at Amelie.

"I went out to the forest and caught
A hundred thousand fireflies
As they ricochet round the room
They remind me of your starry eyes
Someone else's might not have made me so sad
But this is the worst night I ever had
'cause I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me"
-100,000 Fireflies / Magnetic Fields

"So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful."
-Steve Martin, L.A. STORY

When things are not going so well, it seems like they get worse and worse with each step.

Then life turns on a dime, and things seems to get better no matter which way you turn.

Positive energy attracts positive; negative, negative.

All that to say, it's good to be on the plus side of the equation for a while.

I'm reminded of all the people that compare life to a roller coaster, with ups and downs and loops and screams and smiles. But that's not entirely right, because you can stand back and see the course of the coaster before you even get in line. There are no surprises, no matter how much you try to forget what you've seen.

Life is like life. That's pretty to-the-point.

Days like this, the euphoric buzz of excitement and things falling into place -- you can't help but dig being alive. Just being. It's okay, for a bit, to set the gearshift to neutral and take your hands off the wheel and enjoy the scenery. And I think it's important to both have and recognize those times.

Penn Jillette (in SOCK) makes a fair point about being so absorbed in the future or the past that you can miss out on the present -- and if you keep this up long enough, you've not really lived. It's a ride, sure, if only in the sense that it has a beginning and an end, and it's how much you experience -- how much you allow yourself to experience the middle that is important. Some people go into horror movies and hide their eyes and slouch into the seat, asking "What'd I miss?" when it's all over. Some people get too excited over a preview that they've seen and can't stop thinking about it. Some people get too hung up on how inferior this movies is to it's prequel.

What about the movie? You paid the price to get in. Might as well enjoy it. Suspend your disbelief, put your feet up on the seat in front of you (fuck the ushers), grab your popcorn and soda and Twizzlers, and just let the two hours pass.

Tweedletweedle ramble on...

Currently obsessed with Gary Jules' cover of MAD WORLD (originally by Tears For Fears) -- fans of DONNIE DARKO will recognize it immediately. I mustmustmust convince Eric and Chance to cover this. I want to make it less sad and more dark and twisted. MUSTMUSTMUST. Increase my bust.

If by arms, of course, you mean "the reach of the sharpened claws of two cats." But it's okay by me.

My sister looks good, all things considered (she's in the early baby phase of motherhood, meaning that she sleeps -- well, never). My niece is beyond adorable (grain of salt warning: I think all babies are adorable until they hit the age of two, at which point they should be marked "RETURN TO SENDER"). My sister and brother-in-law live about five minutes from Chapel Hill, in a semi-secluded neighborhood that borders on a huge amount of natural area -- meaning that the entire four days felt much like staying at a cabin in the mountains, only closer to civilization. It was a perfect placement.

Didn't go out at all -- not counting the two times that Mandy, Bird, sometimes Chris, and I went to Elmo's, their favorite place to eat -- which was a really nice bit of decompression for me. Read LIFE OF PI (finally) and SOCK (Penn Jillette's pop-culture-soaked noir debut/metaphorical look at the atheist's view of religion), watched DONNIE DARKO and RETURN OF THE KING and HIDE & CREEP... generally, lazed. Something I have a hard time doing, and something I need to do more often.

Also, avoided the computer for four days. That may be the key to a rich and successful life. Must look further into that.

Strange things on return, too -- got an email from one of the many and sundry online dating services that said I had gotten a wink from someone (for the fortunately uninitiated, a wink is a non-message of interest. It's cheap and safe. Sing it with me....), and a subsequent message saying that someone I had added to my hotlist (a way to bookmark profiles you find interesting) had added me.

Intrigue! Delusional hope! Etc.

Well, having now spoken to said someone, it turns out to be someone that I met years and years ago, and then again, and then again -- her brother is a great guy who is a good acquiantance of mine, and we have a lot of mutuals (both acquiantances and interests). I have always found said someone very attractive, but from a distance; call it fear of what might come out of my open mouth.

And so we are set to meet tomorrow night for drinks and conversationalizing*. I look forward to it with great relish.

(*Conversationalizing is neither a word nor a sloppy attempt at euphemism. It, much like my choice of 'relish,' is a bad hangover from reading too many books in a short timeframe, and having not written anything outside of computer code for four days.)

Random leftover thoughts:

• Why must airports feature voice recordings using local dialect? There's nothing like being reminded that you're in the South by hearing a pre-recorded message in a deep twangy drawl. Nothing, that is, save getting kicked hard in the jewels. Or shooting moonshine. Anally.
  
• The universe has a skin, and that skin is translucent, sometimes. I don't know what that means, but it presented itself to me in the smoking closet in the Nashville airport and has remained in my forebrain since; therefore, it is true.
  
• I am once again reminded that there are no rules, only expectations.
  
• Applying desired change to your life (more to the point, your unconscious way of approaching and living life) is difficult; resuming life is equally difficult. Sometimes, it seems like a really fun concept to just wipe everything and start over -- not out of need or even desire to do so, but rather to avoid having to return from a break from the norm.
  
• From LIFE OF PI (pt. I):
  

  I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"--and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain" and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.

  
  
• There is no quicker way to find yourself ass-deep in drama than to declare yourself happily free of it.
  
• From LIFE OF PI (pt. II):
  

  All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in a strange, sometimes inexplicable ways.

  
  

Now, off to do some work.

Spent the past seven hours working on the last major hump of a new client's website... nice work, I like it, new learning, etc.

And now, I leave for a few days. Off to see the sister and niece. Can't wait to relax, and escape from all this for a bit.

Should be nice, see you soon, hats off to the Man.

Waking up waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay late on a Saturday and discovering a filling floating loose in your mouth.

And sadly, not someone else's filling. My own.

Ouch, says I. And without dental insurance, stable income, or even a dentist that owes me a favor, I think I might just have to learn to live with some pain for a bit.

Damn it.

Not my life, these days. It's just not my life.

Was supposed to meet a girl this past weekend.

She didn't like me 'cause I have no hair. I didn't even get introduced, see... Cause I have no hair.

Not mohair. No hair.

But that's just right now, see? Cause sometimes I get bored and turn my hair orange, or shave it all off for shits and giggles.

But that's okay, cause it feels like velvet. Smooth, rough... smooth, rough...

Still, I am sad. Because this particular chica is quite cute. She is a friend of my friend Liesl. Who also doesn't like my hair gone. But she has a husband, who has hair (and without hair, he vaguely resembles a cancer patient). So phblllt to her.

Unless she can talk me up. Because I'm a swell guy, even with no hair.

Sigh.

I can't win for losing my hair.

Perhaps, one day, when I have my long and glorious locks back, I will gain the attention and awe of this particular chica. Until then.... sigh. Oh well. C'est la vie. And other sigh-like sayings.

Now, onto more important things, like ... willing my hair long again.

(this has been an informational message from the vanity-driven side of the author. we now return you to your menaingless ramblings and found humor)

"I woke up today
Expecting to find all that I sought
And climb the mountains of the life I bought
Finally I'm at the top of every hierarchy
Unfortunately there is no one left
But me"
-- Iter Impius

Strange dreams last night, involving way too many exes. It was, strangely, totally coherent (at least, my memory of it is), which is odd for me. Something involving being in Orlando with one and her family, but I was going to be taking their van back to Birmingham because I had to leave early. I thought of calling another on my way back through, since she lives in Orlando... So Kevin Finney and I went to the gigantic mall and bought snacks from kiosks (mine for the seven hour drive, he for his wife Liesl), and then headed back to the lake house where we were staying. It was there that I had to be quiet packing my things so as not to wake the ex-wife who was sleeping there, preparing to head out for a vacation with her new boyfriend.

It doesn't sound coherent, but it was.

Anyway...

The long and short of that is that sometimes dreams have a lasting effect on the perception of the day for me (and I know it's true of others -- my ex-wife was once mad at me for days because of a dream she had in which I either kissed another girl or was neglectful). Dreams about exes -- well, just color me strangely nostalgic. Not quite wistful or melancholy, as too many people will assume, just.... I don't know.

'Teched' comes to mind. But I think my stream-of-conscious is overflowing the banks again.

"I'm sorry!
For the things we did and didn't do
Forgive us; the fools that rushed ahead without a single clue"

-- Nihil Morari

Spending too much time lately thinking of departed friends. Not departed in the dead and buried sense... well, that's not entirely true. Dead is something that some of them might as well be, given the walls I've built where some of them are concerned.

But in this town (and is this true everywhere, or only in an incestuous hole like Birmingham?), you can't escape from anything or anyone. It's the small-town that thinks it can. (Can what? Be Atlanta? Or does it simply aspire to "city" status?) Everywhere you turn, you'll meet someone that you know, even if you weren't aware of it. People know you, even if you don't know them. All the people you meet will know your estranged best friend or want to date your ex.

This is, for the record and to state the obvious, going nowhere. Except down here in words, hopefully to make sense later. Or now. I'm not picky.

I'm dusting my brain.

And wow, this Saigon Kick disc of remakes and leftovers sucks ass.

Anyway.

There's this issue in my head of wondering whether all this loss -- or more frankly, all that I've thrown away -- was for the best. Am I glorifying the past, as I have a tedency to do? Or are the regrets and hurt when I notice that I've been removed from this or conveniently left out of that legimate concerns that maybe there was a better way of handling things?

A memory of Civil Air Patrol just popped into mind, of doing everything that I thought I was suppoesd to do, everything that I understood to be the way things were done, and ending up alienating everyone. And another, of -- the name escapes me. Model Senate? Something in high school, senior year, out at Birmingham Southern, where I played John Kerry or Christopher Dodd (wow, my memory is really not good, is it?). And again, everything went right, felt right, fell into place, until the end, when the rug was yanked out from under me, and I was left holding false impressions of the right way...

But then, my memory is a fuzzy and warm creature that likes to play tricks and hide in obvious places.

"All my life this is understood
Wasting my time like you knew that I would...knew that I would
So I hide my internal suicide
All my pride just to keep it inside..."
-- Suicide

Wow, this album just never gets better. Poor SK. Wait... Poor me. I just listened to the whole thing.

Cynical optimist, that's me. You fuckers.

I feel reasonably convinced that there is something more on the other side of this brick wall -- something worth waiting for. If I could only get around the wall... Or even see some evidence that this isn't hope for the sake of avoiding despair...

In other news, there is nothing more irritating to me than broken website design. Bad design is one thing -- and I'm talking of the design that is beyond opinion, just plain awful -- but broken design is just awful, because it speaks of laziness.

Layers are such a brilliant thing, and simultaneously the worst thing ever to be included in Dreamweaver (or whatever the non-HTML-comprehending use today).

Oh, and speaking in anger or arrogance on the web is just not smart.

Not that I'm innocent. Just saying.

Actually, ex-roomies Kevin and Liesl, now married, and still proud owners of the two bitches in the picture below:

No, they're bitches, see? Cooper (insert David Lynch screaming at Kyle MacLachlan here) and Molly Cate. And little Adolf is just enough man for hte both of 'em.

Oh, and the picture -- only slightly posed (everything but the lotion belongs) -- that will ruin Adolf forever:

Cats are strange, and that's why they rock. Not quite so much as Jessica's best-pup-in-the-whole-damn-world-period-bar-none-shut-the-fuck-up-you're-wrong Attilla, but a close second.