that was depressederday, this is a new day

The last two days have been a bit rough for me, as I’ve felt the looming challenges of moving and the pre-moving workout that is cleaning and packing. I’m off to start my work week in a few hours now, and am hoping for a fresh start.

There’s something I have to take care of relationally at work, gonna need some motivation for that.

There’s a bunch of things I need to get rid of clothes wise, gonna need some motivation for that.

There’s quite a few boxes that I need to re-pack, gonna need some motivation for that.

There’s, as you can see, a great need for motivation for all that.

So, if you pray; do that / if you read ‘The Secret’ and bought it; will the universe my way / and if you just think good thoughts; tell them to me.

Motivation is the key here.

———-
The best words I ingested today came from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close:
A youth finds himself in the tangles of love, and as he lives in a separate town from her, he walks ashamedly to her town to see her. Head hung, he walks the road for six days straight. He spends his days staring at her home, and yet she is not there. Then, finally on the seventh day, halfway down the road, they run smack into each other. Their conversation is awkward for a moment. The boy admits that he was going to see her, and laughs at himself. The girl laughs back and…

“That explains it,” she said when she was able to speak. “It?” “That explains why, each of the last six days, you weren’t at your house.” We stopped laughing, I took the world into me, rearranged it, and sent it back out as a question: “Do you like me?”

Holy crap that is awesome prose. That is why I recommend Jonathan Safran Foer.

a bit of fiction…

I wrote this the other night, I’m not sure how I feel about it. I don’t hate the writing, but the story feels like it’s going to end up being a sort of ‘Stand By Me’ account of things, Ugh. It also feels heavy on the sexuality, which I’m not such a big fan of, especially with kids… Thoughts, Anyone, Anyone, Bueller?

—–
I don’t know how I feel about telling you this, but Harrison’s dead so he won’t care. And I really feel like someone should know what happened to him, to us, that made him that way. I can’t explain it, but we both went through the same things and I turned out somewhat normal. To be honest, I often feel like the broken one, I mean, Harrison responded the way you might expect someone to. He’s the one it affected, he’s the kind they make a movie about, and me? I’m just a thirty-something, stock-rich, ex husband… as beige as they come.

Anyway, I, well, I don’t know where to start. I don’t think I could tell it with foreshadowing and fragmented time lines and the ballsy dis-regard for format that guys like Frey and Foer have. I think I’ll have to start from the beginning and it’ll probably have some dry spots, but bear with me, I have to get this out.

Eighth grade brought with it a girl. New to the school with those killer crimped blond bangs and leg-warmers. Elise Amron. E.A. means video games to you, it means first love to me. Elise was not too cool, but cool enough. It was easy to sit by her at lunch and not feel awkward, I mean, she had a walkman and a worn out copy of Licensed to Ill. For a while I thought I was the only guy in the world that knew anything about what it felt like to be in love with Elise. Then I met Rod, biggest pervert I ever knew, and he showed me a picture he took of Elise’s panties with a mini 110 camera he had. I know now that he probably took it on the playground, but at the time I was convinced that he had followed her home and taken it from a perch on a tree while looking through her window. How I missed the blatant reference to Back to the Future I’ll never quite know.

Regardless, Rod and I started the ILEA club, because acronyms were cool and, we figured, a good way to keep the adults (and the girls?) in the dark. We had five members and a weekly meeting going before Harrison showed up. Rod stopped him at the fence that separated my back yard from the alley. “Why are you here?” Harrison blushed, “I love Elise Amron.” Rod put a finger over his mouth and lifted the latch on the gate. We made Harrison look at Jakes’ Playboy until he got an erection, that was initiation enough for us. It was only a few meetings into it that I realized that Rod was a jerk and that Harrison and I were going to be best friends. Soon ILEA broke up after a fight over who had seen more of her breasts (which, I’m guessing, were barely past training bra stage at the time, I really can’t remember).

Harrison and I sat in the shed calling Rod names until my mom came out and offered him dinner. He stayed over that night and I remember the sound of his breathing. That never changed, I could always tell it was Harrison by the long slow inhale that ended jerkily and let out slightly faster than it went in. I always wake up before everyone else, so I remember looking at my new best friend while he slept. His blond to my brown, his short nose to my tall one, and something, something on his neck, up there by the hairline, purplish. I first thought it was a hickey…

Chapter 1:

In which we meet our hero…

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I have a poll now! Look for new ones regularly…
(Over there —> on the right side…)
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Roses from my Friends (Live) – Ben Harper
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Something about a prosthetic testicle on a bacon plate…
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Sore bowling thumb.
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Motivational words from a friend.
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The job I should apply for.
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Pay the 30 bucks or sue the arseholes?
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“I’m wearing heavy boots.”
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2, 6, 6, 2
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The courage to do that which may break that which I must do it to.
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Pre Lives
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Football is coming soon.
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“Which I know about, but wish I didn’t”
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What?
Go to bed?
Why?
Well just because you can’t make sense of it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense.
Sheesh.

Because it’s You

Because it’s You
– Gabe Thexton –
—–
It only hurts because it’s you,
So help yourself,
Tell me the truth,
Is it mad of me,
To be mad about you?

You say you will,
Do this do that,
But somehow still,
You forget,
And I’m left feeling ill.

Your touch a tease,
Like a jolt to the heart,
I’m left in unease,
And as you walk away,
‘More’ I whisper, ‘please…’

It only hurts because it’s you,
So help yourself,
Tell me the truth,
Is it mad of me,
To be mad about you?

Meteor Shower, by Rhett Miller

Love gets you in the gut
Takes the top off of your head
And makes you wish that you were dead

Drugs help but not enough
Take the load off of your mind
And scoop out everything you find

Meteor shower
Meteor shower

I cannot make light, I’m so burned out
I know where you are
I cannot believe how much it hurts
I’m a fallen star

Time sneaks up from behind
Puts you six feet underground
While the world keeps spinning round

Love gets you in the gut
Takes the top off of your head
And makes you wish that you were…

(Sigh, I was definitely relating to this song today, before I even knew it existed. Heard it on Slacker…)

Geocache Bombs

News Article…

Update: Better Article

In the far north-eastern town of Sterling, CO today, someone saw a man put what looked like an ammunition cannister into the bushes near two banks.

Police called in the nearest bomb squad in from 80 miles west (the article erroneously says east) in Greeley, CO. They retrieved the cannister, and found that it was not a bomb, but a container for a log-book for the sport of Geocaching.

This cracks me up.

If you don’t know what Geocaching is, go wiki it.

UPDATE: I sent this to the Geocaching site, and to Wil Wheaton (who has blogged of his interest in the subject). There was some confusion at the Geocaching site, and now Wil’s ended up with some emails meant for me, sheesh. Sorry Wil, didn’t mean to ’spam’ you…

Saying for a bad day.

When Life gives you lemons, make lemonade…
When Life gives you rotten lemons, you’re pretty much f%$!ed.

blog blog blog

not dead, just busy…

peace out.

HARRY POTTER RULES!

That first part was good enough for a blog title.

I have a massive amount of things to say, and not near the patience to even start to try to say them all…

The topics:

goodreads.com – get it, friend me.

global warming – and how it doesn’t matter if it’s real, we should still take care of this planet.

IM/Email friends – how cool is that?

Religion – haves and have nots and where it all belongs

How I didn’t even get to the ‘I went to Church’ part on MoPoMo – I will, I promise

cold night air – and how good it feels

sleep – it’s what’s for dinner.

Part 2: In which we find some answers

Ok, I’m finally getting around to part two.
Part one is just a short scroll down (or click here you lazy freak).

So I’m sitting there with this spirituality that has become a nagging smelling stack of dishes. Dishes that I plug my nose around, and ignore as best I can…

And I think the ’smelly’ part of that analogy is where I’ll pick it back up again. Have you ever smelled something that just absolutely made your stomach turn? My first experience with this was while working in the meat department at the grocery store. I was assigned the task of disposing of all the old meat. What you may not know is that old meat is recycled. They used to use it for feed, now it’s mainly used as fertilizer. So that makes my job fun. I had to cut open each package, and dump it into a barrel. The cool thing about refrigeration is that it keeps the smell down, generally. There is, however, one thing that reeks beyond all reekage. Rotten Chicken. It’s truly puke-worthy folks.

I write all that not to gross you out (ok, maybe a bit), but to get across how very stinky this whole spirituality thing had become to me.

Every time I thought about it, I wanted to puke.

Part of me felt as though I was that guy that Christians like to say ‘fell away’, I wasn’t going to church or participating in my spirituality at all. The other part of me felt free as a bird, thrilled to be rid of restrictions and expectations. I didn’t know what to do. Everything around me told me the answers to my questions were in books. Books from the Bible to The Tao of Pooh, books that I couldn’t, for the time being, even bear (pun so intended) to pick up. So I went for a long while without doing anything.

Then one day I had a moment. I can’t tell you what exactly it was, but it was something rather small. Something small that had a rather large effect. I encountered a situation that…

…stared at me briefly, and with a voice like sand paper spoke…
“All right kid. This way or that way. I don’t care which one you take, just do it fast or you get a bullet in the brain pan, squish.”
I swallowed hard and flinched…
“That way.” I said, fear etched on my forehead.

This tiny little decision had massive implications. I’d been forced decide, and to act on what I believed. Funny thing was, it was an easy choice. And for the next week all I could think about was the fact that I had acted the way I wanted to, and that my action fell firmly in line with the beliefs that I had so seriously been doubting. It wasn’t in books, it wasn’t in conversations, it wasn’t in the horoscope (blech). The answer I needed was in doing what I believed. I suddenly felt like a genie…

PHENOMENAL COSMIC ANSWERS!
Itty Bitty Incident.

Phew, that was a relief. But now what? You’re thinking to yourself ‘This one little thing can’t solve all the problems’. Yeah, you’re right, it can’t. But it took me back to a starting point, it told me which race I was running in. The rest will come with time, and I can tackle the pieces bit by bit.

—–

Let’s tackle some pieces.

—–

Ok, first piece, find some people who believe what you do and hang out with them.
This is called fellowship, and it’s most commonly done in a setting called church.
So, first piece, find a church. (some other time we’ll talk about ‘a church‘ vs. ‘the church‘ and all those fun semantical goodies)

Great, this one’s harder than it sounds…
Problem 1: The Social Anxiety Factor. Most people would be surprised at this, but I have some minor issues with ‘going places and meeting people’, and it doesn’t help that I’ve not had this kind of interaction in half a year. If I actually go, and interact with them, everything usually turns out fine, but I have to get over the hump and do it. And believe me, that can be a big-ass hump sometimes. Things that help? Someone to go with, knowing someone already there, and/or being drug against my will.

… I hate to do this, but it’s 1am again, and I have to be in Evergreen at 8.
Stay tuned for part 3…