Dairy of a Madman

Looking back a few years, I realize how important inertia is in a life like mine. It’s incredibly hard to stop when you’ve got years of moving fast (and non-stop) at your back — to the extent that I’ve had friends gift me with physical reminders that I need to relax.

Like, a metal sign that sits atop my computer monitor, carved to say “RELAX.” And copious amounts of Xanax.

Not really.

A few months ago, I stopped, finally (though my wife might argue that point). I’ve not produced anything worth talking about in almost a year. No screenplays, no articles, no short or long fiction. No website redesigns, no films. Nothing. I’m still working 60+ hours a week between my day job as a web design guy and my night job as a provider of Cirrhosis, still playing in the band, but nothing else. I’ve been catching up on DVDs and books, playing lots of Scrabble and Tiger Woods Golf on the XBox. Relaxing, right?

Starting this week, I’m going to reestablish the progressive inertia. I don’t have anything concrete in mind yet, though (as always) I have a million ideas. Looking down the tunnel in front of me, it’s unnerving: you don’t realize how much progress you’ve made until you’ve let it slip away from you. When you’re climbing mountains, you don’t look down — it’s not important how far you’ve come as much as how much further you have to go. But stop climbing, return to the bottom (gravity never sleeps, you know), and look up to the last flag you spiked into the stone face before you quit.

Scary, yes, but invigorating. Good to know that you’ve not scaled to the summit yet, when there’s plenty more time to go.

Now listening to:
Just another mountain? Yes and no, in a world devoid of binary questions.

If I don’t get laid, it’s the woman’s loss, not mine. It’s all women’s loss. What the fuck else are they going to talk about during Ladies Night? Their hopes and dreams? Isn’t that the same thing?

Oh, and there are top ten lists, too:

Whether or not you believe in Jesus, there is one fact you can’t argue with: he was a man. No religion anywhere has ever put a woman in charge of shit. That’s called dogma — man-dogma — and it means men are better than women.

I’ll leave it to you to decide whether I’m laughing or taking this seriously today (here’s a hint: don’t bother reading through any of the comments; men and women take themselves waaay too seriously).

Yes, I know his name is R. Lee Ermey. And if you imply otherwise, I’ll beat you to death with nothing more than a used newspaper and your own cirrhotic liver. Removing my watch first, I assure you.

Working in a dive bar is one of the greatest jobs I’ve ever had. In fact, perhaps even more than playing with the Exhibit(s), I’ve felt like a rock star in my nights behind the bar over the past two years. Working just about anywhere else in the bar industry — clubs, where the bone-dusting thump of techno attracts the lowest common denominator of rednecks and Guidos (sadly, Birmingham and New York City aren’t that different — only the names change at last call), lounges with their pretentions that alcoholism isn’t as sad if it’s dressed up, restaurants where the regulars can blame their daily drinking on the call of cheap wings or the widescreen TVs on the walls — just isn’t the same experience, and never could be.

Continue reading “Where pub meets saloon”

As we sit at our desks, programming our websites or writing our magazine articles or doing our homework, the world keeps turning, and 32 people are fatally shot at a school in West Virginia before the killer turns the gun on himself. We pick through every shred of evidence, tangential or not, trying to pinpoint what video games or music or law passed by the other side is to blame. We eat up media time with every new development, speculating without having the full picture, blaming anyone that seems to fit our idea of the bad guy. If he’s Korean, then by god all you Orientals are under the suspicious eye. And hey, aren’t most Koreans Muslim, anyway? Continue reading “Sensitivity gradient”

For all my ability to empathize with other people, there are a lot of things that I can’t understand. The attraction to bondage, S&M, or shoe fetishes, for instance.

Yeah, I’m watching the Betty Page movie. It’s CL’s fascination, not mine (I should note for the people that know her that she — at least to her admission — doesn’t get the bondage or shoe thing, either, those she does have a huge collection of twink magazines).

Continue reading “Sixty years on…”