"The Glory" - My favorite quote - John Steinbeck

What follows is Chapter 13 in John Steinbeck's East of Eden:

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then - the glory - so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two man can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations has substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions: What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of a man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

10:32 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Habits

Bad habits come in many forms: smoking, drinking, snorting, injecting, absorbing cutaneously,  eating, over-eating, cracking, biting things, stealing, cheating, masturbation, vomiting, cutting, putting neon lights on and under your car, gambling, masturbation, repetition, pontification, picking your nose, autoeroticasphyxia, leaving your office door open so all your employees can see something they shouldn't, excuses, "popped" collars, talking too loud on your cell-phone, not washing your hands after using the bathroom, not washing your bathroom after using your hands, wearing too much makeup, and working when there's sleep to be done.

I stopped short and didn't mention "sex with random people" because I don't believe that you can have sex with random people; that is called rape. Most "random people" arn't willing participants in sexual intercourse, and therefore are not "random" at all.  I've always objected to the malapropistic uses of that word.

In November of last year I quit smoking. I had been smoking for a long time if you consider how old I am. I started smoking to prove I was cool around age thirteen and never really became cool until I turned sixteen. I quit because my wife wanted me to and also partially because smoking didn't carry the same satisfaction it used to; each time I smoked I felt nauseous and possessed by the strong smell of tobacco smoke.

Surprisingly it has been very easy to quit smoking as opposed to quitting something that is more ingrained in my moment to moment activities, as in biting my fingernails and, more predominately: cracking my knuckles.

Some suggest applying bad or bitter tastingBiting my fingernails has been something very near and dear to me since I could grow teeth and fingernails simultaneously. Ever since my hands have more or less been situated in or near my mouth; I commonly bite my fingernails until my fingers bleed and my fingers become so delicate that I can barely use them for anything. solutions to one's fingernails to prevent them from enjoying biting their fingernails. The method I use is constant mindfulness. If you try to not do something you really want to do, you will most likely do it.

My first love and my archetypal bad habit is twirling my hair. I used to have very long hair, even when I was a child. I would essentially pull out a tuft of my hair by twirling it repeatedly. I had huge bald spots when I was a child because I loved doing that so much. Later on, maybe as an awakening to my first love or probably just because I felt like it, I would rub my hair around in a circle until it became so matted that people would ask: "did you stick your finger in a light socket?"

After that I began cracking my knuckles, circa 1988, when I was five years old. I did it despite everyone's adminition, "CRACKING YOUR KNUCKLES WILL GIVE YOU HAND CANCER!!!!" I've been cracking my knuckles for 18 years now. This bad habit has been the most challenging one to stop because my hands are right next to one another and they often do things without the slightest voluntary thought on my part.

This all could have been much worse. I could be looking for a way out of an east Los Angeles gang, where I'd have to have my name tattooed on my neck for ease of identification or live in some half-way home, all strung out because all I do is buy beany babies. Luckily my habits are fairly common and culturally accepted and I don't have to say "It's my addiction," like I can't prevent myself from doing it. The truth is: if you don't like something, you won't do it, and apparently I love to bite my fingernails and crack my knuckles.

3:06 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Most Painful

In my life I have been fortunate enough to have a wide variety of injuries, a few of which were very serious, and others not so serious. When I was twelve my appendix burst. Almost exactly one year later I broke my right wrist. My radius (the long bone, on your thumb's side that connects your carpals with your humerus) was broken twice and the ulna (the long bone, on your pinky's side that connects your carpals to your humerus) was broken twice and near my carpals, broke out of my skin. My arm was in a Z-shape with my hand being at the top left of the Z and my elbow being at the bottom right.

I broke my arm the same way most kids my age broke their bones in the past and continue to break bones in the future: skateboarding. I was never that good at skateboarding or even decent; I couldn't even land a kickflip,though once I landed a heelflip, but only once. The day I broke my arm was the same day that my sister had her high school graduation party. During the party I snuck off with some of my friends and ended up skateboarding a few miles away from home.

It's actually kind of embarrassing how I broke my arm. One would like to pontificate and say, "It was my own fault. I shouldn't have grinded that huge rail that nobody else wanted to try. I guess this is the price I pay for being braver than everybody." The reality was that I was grinding a rail that was less than 6'' off the ground and lost my balance and fell backwards and extended both arms to cushion my fall.

I panicked when I got up. My arm was completely limp. I had no idea what I should do. Luckily there were a few adults watching us from their garage. They called an ambulance for me and they also called my mom, who was laid up from her recent hysterectomy.

When the ambulance arrived, the two EMTs didn't bother setting my arm, they just put it in a little cardboard splint and tied it around my neck for support. A few moments after they arrived, my sister and her boyfriend (now husband), Christian, and my mom's boyfriend Tim showed up and took me in my grandfather's old 1984 Ford LTD, white with maroon interior, to the emergency room.

Tim explained my situation to the lady behind the front desk. She instructed us to take a seat. They didn't take my injury too seriously because it was wrapped and I didn't make a sound for a few hours. We were there for four hours and each time I said "Owwww," my mom's boyfriend would instruct me to "not be such a pussy."

I thought I was doing pretty well. I had a compound fracture, broken in four places and all I said was "oww" occasionally. Not to mention the fact that I was thirteen.

When I was finally seen by a doctor, they brought me into the X-ray room in a wheelchair and took a few pictures of it. When they wheeled me out the doctor explained that my arm was "pretty bad" and that it would require surgery.

A few hours later my arm was all put back together and placed inside a hard white container. The worst part was that my summer school started the next day and you were only allowed to miss two days before being kicked out of the summer school program.

I missed two days and returned to school on the third and was actually the first person in my class to complete the course, all the while using my left hand to write.

You might think that this was the most painful thing that ever happened to me. It wasn't. I think I was in shock the whole time and hardly felt anything in my arm.

As a side note, and sort of a continuation of the story of my scar collection, I want to mention something else. When I was around five years old I had a huge rash that was enveloping my entire chest and belly. I almost resembled a burn victim with the red and bloody bumps all over me. My mom took me to doctors, dermatologists, pediatric specialists, etc. and no one could come up with an answer as to what I had.

One day I had a doctor's appointment, that if I knew what I was in for, I wouldn't have went along so easily. My mother and I entered the doctor's office and I took my place on the table with the flimsy paper over it. I took off my shirt as instructed and I noticed that two nurses came into the room. The doctor told me to lay, face up on the table. When I did so the nurses and my mom held me by my arms and legs as the doctor proceeded to cut two bloody red bumps off of my left shoulder.

Despite these two stories, there still exists one more, and far more painful story that I have to tell. A summer afternoon had my friend and me in a field in my home town, investigating an abandoned truck. It looked like all the truck needed was a battery. We disconnected the battery in my '91 Mercury Cougar and walked it over to the truck and connected it. All we succeeded in doing was draining my battery. I called Christian to come out and help jump my car. While we were waiting for him we investigated the lot a little more.

We found a lawn mower which had no wheels. I lifted it up. Dissatisfied, I let it drop. It landed right on my right big toenail. It hurt a little at first. The pain just continued to grow until that night. After I drove Will home I went back home myself, my foot throbbing the entire way. I tried to go to sleep, but the pain kept waking me up. I knew what I had to do. I took a needle from my mom's sewing box and a light I had and closed the door behind me on my way into the bathroom. I fired up the lighter and held it under the needle until I was satisfied that it was good enough. With all my strength I pressed the needle down into my big toenail.

By now my toenail was about to pop off from all the blood that was building up pressure underneath. It was the most intense stabbing pain I have ever had. I tried as hard as I could, but nothing would pierce my toenail. I finally told my mom the next morning that I needed to see a doctor.

She brought me down to the hospital and when the doctor came into the room he told me exactly what he was going to do: "Locally anesthetize and burn a few holes in my big toenail with a cautery." That sounded delightful to me and I couldn't wait to begin. He plugged my toe with a few shots of numbing medicine and asked me "Do you know what a cautery is?" I said "A close group of friends?" (Coterie) and he said "I guess you're right, but not that kind of cautery."

When he brought it out I watched the whole procedure without flinching. It was so great. When my toe was finally numbed I felt so great not having that pain. The doctor quickly burned four or five holes into my toenail and said, "okay, you might want to turn away for this part." I said, "No thank you." He gave me a moment to reconsider and I didn't. He grabbed my toe with his gloved hand and squeezed. The blood flowed out through the holes and it felt fantastic. All the pressure cleared out from under my toenail and I felt great again.

Later on that night I pulled my toenail off with some pliers. I just had to soak my foot in warm water and epsom salt each night. In time I developed an ingrown toenail. I went back to the hospital to get it fixed, but that really didn't do anything for me. Since then my wife fixed it for me.

11:52 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The most embarrassing moment of my life.

I've had stomach pains my entire life, so I didn't think much of it when I had a stomach ache one morning before school when I was twelve. I just called my mom at work and told her that I didn't feel well and I didn't want to go to school that day. She gave me permission to stay home.

My stomach pains continued to get worse. I got very nauseous and had horrible diarrhea at the same time. I was losing fluids from every possible location. I would stop shitting just long enough to vomit and then back to shitting! I felt awful. The only time I got any sort of respite from intensely horrific pain was when I was sleeping, which I could barely achieve anyway.

When my mom came home I told her that I couldn't hold down any food and my stomach was absolutely killing me. She told me to take some medicine and take it easy and then rushed off to go bowling a few towns over.

While she was at the bowling alley I called a few times and had her paged to come up to the front. I think I told the guy who answered the phone to page her with, "Jane Patterson, your dying son is on the phone…" That must have hit a nerve because after bowling she came home and went to sleep!

I lost all hope that I would be seeing my 13^th birthday and fell asleep that night expecting to wake up with my dried bloody intestines spilling from my belly onto my multicolored blanket my mom crocheted for me a year before.

I awoke at 5am with a start; my mom shook me awake saying, "We've got to get you to the emergency room." So I threw on my best gray sweatpants and t-shirt and went and got into the car. The entire ride to the hospital was hell. I couldn't get comfortable sitting up. When I got to the hospital we stood at the front desk and I suddenly realized that I had to shit really badly. I informed my mom and made my way toward the nearest restroom.

But I didn't quite make it. Imagine the most concentrated brown bile squirting from your ass involuntarily. It had absolutely no consistency to it. It was just liquid shit and it smelled like a bouquet of roses, obviously. It smelled like aged intestines and the end product of what is done with all the filth you shove down your mouth hole.

When I got into the bathroom I relieved myself as best I could, but I was already relieved before I even got to the bathroom. I cleaned up all the shit that ran down the back of my thigh into my sock. After using two full rolls of toilet tissue I flushed and went to the sink to wash up. My face was so yellow with jaundice that I thought I was Chinese or a Simpson.

I returned to my mom at the front desk and told her that I had lost control of my bowels and she just said "Oh." How the fuck do you respond to something like that?

Coincidentally it wouldn't be my mother's first run in with poo poo. She was a saint for what she put up with, not from me, but from my grandmother.

When I was around ten years old and my mom, my step-dad Felix, and I were eating Chinese food in my grandmother's kitchen. We just stopped over to say hi and to eat our food, but grandma had other plans. Unbeknownst to Felix and me, my grandmother was constipated and decided to take a laxative, one whose instructions read "Take before you fall asleep at night." Instead she took it in the middle of the day. She raced to the bathroom as fast as her grandma legs could carry her. Let me explain, my grandmother has always been really big. I could go into greater detail, but it'd probably be better if I didn't for the sake of your gastrointestinal health.

On her way to the toilet she entered the bathroom, closed the door, and shit all over the wall. She cleaned up a little with a hand towel and made her way into the kitchen, where we were eating. She poked her head in and said "Janie… I had an accident."

My poor mother had to stop eating and go clean up her mother's shit from the bathroom wall. Poor woman.

I haven't even reached the best part of the story yet. I was waiting to be seen by a doctor and they got me into a gown and had to get me to the radiology department for some X-rays. As I got into my hospital gown I realized that it was very revealing from behind, and bearing in mind my most recent dorsal problems, I knew that it wasn't going to bode well for me or my young self-esteem.

A nurse wheeled me down to the radiology department in a gurney. Arriving there, they instructed me to stand in front of a specialized led wall. The X-ray technician revealed herself from behind another wall in the X-ray room. She was a smoking hot chick of not more than 30 years. She walked over and told me that I needed to move to my right or my left a few feet so as to get a better picture of my troubled belly. Right when she placed her hand on my midsection I let loose with a copious stream of liquid feces. It looked as though I had melted desert topping emanating from my asshole.

This is one of my formative moments in life. I just remember linking my recognition of beauty in a female with my uncontrollable bowels and the look on her face saying, "It's okay, it's okay. It's perfectly all right to shit yourself in front of me."

11:09 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lies about Hitler?

Everybody knows that Hitler was an asshole, but anything you read about Hitler mentions more than his overt racism and hatred. Most things you read or programs you see on Hitler make mention that he was a fecalphiliac and raped his niece.

I just wonder if all this wasn't just made up to prevent people from trying to be like Hitler. I mean if a little boy said, "I wanna be like Hitler when I grow up," you'd just say, "you want your niece to shit on your chest? Eww, you're sick!"

Anyway who is going to follow up on the veracity of such statements? Who wants to defend Hitler's good name?

A book I read the first third of, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, says that pretty much every woman Hitler was ever with tried to kill herself, and two, Hitler's niece as well as his wife, actually succeeded.

It can really go either way. People arn't going to raise much fuss if Hitler doesn't get that job he was eyeing because everybody knows he forces women to shit on him. Gives new meaning to 'Eva Braun." Maybe she was a stage performer going under the name "Eva Brown."

7:07 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Auntie Mary's later years

This will probably be to my detriment, but what the fuck?!

In my younger and more vunerable days... I liked to pick on old people! Well I just had a little fun. I used to go over to see my grandmother about once a week and occasionally I'd go down the street to my auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy's house. At the time auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy were both in their 90's. Uncle Jimmy was so old that he was in World War 2 when he was 35 years old. He was so old that when he was about to retire, he sent a letter back to the hospital he was born at to get his birth certificate and when he got it was surprised to find that he was actually born in 1909 and not 1910, like he previously thought.

Despite being 94 years old, he still got around really well and was a horny old bastard. I heard many stories of him propositioning his filipino caretaker for sex. He never got any though. I even heard stories, from my grandmother, that he had come over one day to watch the baseball game with her and he brought a magazine clipping showing how old folks could have sex. That's some creepy shit.

But auntie Mary takes the cake. I don't think I knew her when she had any sense in her head. She was always older than the hills and had short, fire engine red hair.

I used to play this game called, "See if I can get money from uncle Jimmy." Uncle Jimmy was fucking loaded. He carried at least four grand with him at all times. His wallet was so inflated with bills that he sat down at a 45 degree angle. Whenever I'd go over to see them I'd either mow their lawn, for which my uncle would pay me $20.00 (not bad), or play "See if I can get money from uncle Jimmy."

The game was simple enough. I did it once and he gave me money so I just kept doing it. Prior to entering their house I would take out my wallet and put all the cash I had into my front pockets. When I came in I would make small talk for a long while and then I would say something like "Oh, I just got a new wallet, wanna see?" Uncle Jimmy'd say "Yeah, sure." So I'd pull out my baren wallet and he'd say "Oh you don't have any money?" and I'd say "Nope." and he'd bust out his huge wallet and thumb through an entire fucking forest of $100 dollar bills and get me a brand new $20.00 bill. That trick worked like a charm for a long time.

More amusement I used to have with them was more overt and less monetarily propelled. I used to give my friends the tour of old people. My relatives are generally pretty damned funny, but auntie Mary and uncle Jimmy were funnier than Chris Rock in his prime.

At this time auntie Mary was hearing shit and seeing shit too. I'd be talking with uncle Jimmy and all of a sudden she'd say "JAMES!!! I HEAR THE CAT OUTSIDE. LET THE CAT IN!!!" Jimmy would ignore her. Once again, "JAMES!!!! THE CAT IS OUTSIDE, I CAN HEAR HER. LET THE CAT IN!" Jimmy just muttered to himself...

"DAMIT JAMES, THE POOR CAT IS OUTSIDE. LET HER IN!"

All uncle Jimmy said was "That cat died three years ago..."

We were sitting there, my friend Chris and I, and all of the sudden Chris says "MEOW!!!!"

Auntie Mary says "JAMES!!!! THE CAT IS OUTSIDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Jimmy says "No she ain't, Mary."

Chris: "MEOW!!!!!!"

and on it went until we left. As you'll see from later stories, there really didn't need to be much interference for those two to be yelling at one another...

7:55 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A really fucking funny story.

The family I belong to was born from a long line of morticians. My brother told me that our cognomen, "Cappucini," my mother's maiden name, is actually the name of an order of monks that performs funerals. My cousin Mark is currently the head honcho at the local funeral home that used to be owned by his father.

My great uncle Alphonse, Red Cappucini, deceased, was a mortician for a long time in the bay area. My mother told me he started out as the only ambulance driver in contra costa county and then he moved his way up to pulling bodies from the delta. He's got quite a few interesting stories that he told me before he passed, but we'll save that for another blog. This one is about Red's funeral.

The funeral was funny, and Red would have wanted it that way. He was always a very cheerful guy, even when Mark got him a book of famous obituaries for his 90th birthday. I think that was the best thing he got that year. He looked it up and down and everybody quized him on what was displayed on certain peoples' death certificates. He was a great guy and never took himself too seriously.

Before the funeral began all of my old relatives filed in and filled the pews at the funeral home. My oldest relatives sat in the front. My grandmother and my great auntie Mary, her sister, sat right next to one another. We had to sit through a lot of moving speeches. My cousin Brian, my great uncle's grandson came up to delivery his eulogy of his grandfather. He began speaking about how Red used to give him everything he wanted as a kid, or some such thing that grandsons reflect about their grandfathers and my great aunt, confused as to who this young man speaking was, screamed as loud as she could into my grandmother's ear, "WHO'S THAT?!!!"

She said it so loud that everybody in the funeral home looked directly at them. Brian, a little startled, paused and then began speaking. My grandma said "THAT'S BRIAN!!!!!!!!" into auntie Mary's ear.

"WHO????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Auntie Mary inquired.

"THAT'S BRIAN!!!!" quoth grandma.

It's the only time in my life I went to a funeral and had a really good laugh. Everyone in the funeral home chuckled, because you're not supposed to just bust up laughing at a funeral. At the after party everybody had a really good laugh about that one.

This will only mean that I will give you more funny grandma stories. Trust me, there are a great deal more.

7:32 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

California (The Golden State) Vs. New York (The Empire State)

Let me first start out by saying that California will always hold a special place in my mind. I lived there my whole life and most days I was still struck with the impression that the road I was driving on threaded me through the most pulchritudinous land there was to behold anywhere.

That being said, it's now time to commence with the libel!

It was always plain to me that people in California did not think before speaking. Their words just fell out of the anterior part of their head like drool from a retarded fellow. Most people can't say anything coherent at all! Maybe I'll elaborate later...

In New York peoples' diction is much better, they correct themselves after speaking too hastily, they actually give a fuck about the message they're conveying. Most people in New York don't seem to think of themselves as 'cool,' The most frustrating thing in California is people who equate their ignorance with coolness.

Ignorance and coolness are not the same thing. I happen to think they are polar opposites. What do you think? (If anybody reads this shit)

To me there is nothing cooler than knowing what to do and when. I always felt that I was shunned by most people for trying to be smart and trying to express myself in ways that were uncommon. And most of the truly unique people were all the fucking same. Everybody fits nicely into one little subsection of humanity and I'd like to think that I don't. (maybe that's a category though.. something to cogitate on)

The biggest difference between CA and NY are the people. The people in CA won't give you the time of day when you ask. The people in NY actually talk to you!

One day I was in a Waldbaums (You California fuckers wouldn't know what it is... so you can remain in the dark) and going to get a quart of milk. A lady was there at the dairy section selecting which milk to take home with her. As I waited for her to clear the way, she pulled a quart from up high off of the refrigerated shelf and a quart behind it slid and fell off and nearly knocked the bitch out. Here I was expecting her to turn around and give me a dirty look and walk the fuck away, but she turned around, saw that I was looking at her, and she said "That milk almost knocked me the fuck out." It was a breakthrough moment. Since then I have witnessed people in New York not being complete cocksuckers to me on a regular basis.

In California I was at an automated teller machine machine and was filling out the part of the deposit envelope where you write the amount you are depositing. I accidentally wrote on the part that said in big official letters, "DO NOT WRITE HERE, FOR BANK USE ONLY!!!!!!" and was surrounded by swastikas and shit. I said "Fuck" to myself and was about to throw that one out to get a new one when someone walked up to use the other automated teller machine machine. He said "Hey, what's up?" I said, "Not much, just writing on the part of the envelope that you're not supposed to write on." He interrupted me here and said "whoa, whoa, whoa... that's way more information than should be given..."

What kind of fucked up bullshit was that? That pissed me off for days, That clearly demonstrates that people in California don't understand what words mean. "What's up?" isn't 'hello." if that motherfucker said "hello," it would be a different story, but he said "what's up?"

In New York if somebody said "What's up?" he'd probably listen to whatever dumb shit thing I just said and if he didn't like it, he'd say "Oh...okay." or something similar.

But since I moved here I have spoken with many people I didn't know, just as if we were both capable of speech and in the exact same situation.

People in California are so private. Like I give a shit if anybody sees I am buying gum or a pack of cigarettes. If they ask me why I'm buying a particular pack of gum, I'm not going to stare at them like they're psycho. I'll just answer them because perhaps they were thinking of purchasing some fucking gum!

Another thing about California that I don't like is that everybody has the biggest, most gas guzzling SUV ever. The Chevy Tahoe, the Ford Excursion, the Expedition. Every other car gets less than 20 MPG and has no fucking excuse for it. In New York when people have SUVs it's because it snows here and you can hardly get a geo metro to go anywhere, led alone when there's snow on the ground.

California has the worst traffic too. New York has a ton more people in a smaller area and somehow shit is not backed up every day. In CA people on the freeway will slam on their brakes just because there was traffic there yesterday, even though there's none there today.

The number one reason I like New York better than CA... CALTRANS. For people who know what caltrans is I will just say that when it rains and shit needs to be fixed here, people are here fixing it. I see five guys working on something and all fucking five of them are doing something. When Caltrans does something six guys all stand around and one guy mans the "slow" octagon on a stick.

People who've lived their lives in CA should take a look at life in NY and see the difference. Like it or not, you can't deny the difference there.

8:36 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Time and patience...

I used to be so enthusiastic about a lot of what I did: practiced guitar upwards of four hours per day, read until my brain hurt, listened to every bit of a particular artist, memorizing all of their lyrics, melodies, guitar riffs.

It seems those days have passed. Have I just lost interest in these things because they are not interesting anymore? Have I mastered reading? Am I just lost in myself and don't wish to acknowledge anything beyond that?

Most activities and substance I was greatly interested in in the past was so desireable to me because I told myself, "You should like this." I remember reading War and Peace because I had no friends and so I sat in this one space behind the cafeteria, between two trees, on a retaining wall, near the tennis courts, and I read the bulk of it between my fourth and fifth periods my freshmen year of high school. Not many people bothered me. I just remember losing myself in that book. I recall being so completely rejected by the entire school that I decided to reject them and sit and read instead. That was the environment that reading became important to me.

After school I would walk home through an abandoned rail yard and, entering my home and my room, lay prone on my bed reading, resting my chin on my pillow. I read voraciously, sometimes ten books at one time. I would just destroy entire stacks of books... it was one of the only things I looked forward to in my time away from school and the only thing I looked forward to in school.

After a long lapse in attempting to read I've tried to begin my old habits once more. I am trying to pick up in the middle of Moby Dick, a book I stopped reading because it was boring. I can handle boring for about 350 pages, and then I say "fuck it." Melville has crushed my spirit. Hopefully this new book, Expensive People, about a murderer, will be a little more exciting and brief.

Playing the guitar always interested me greatly. Ever since my brother began learning to play when he was sixteen, I wanted to play also. My brother bought me a beautiful little guitar. It was a miniature stratocaster, sunburst, with a white pick guard.

I loved that little guitar. I didn't know much with it for a long time. Neal, my brother, taught me how to play "smoke on the water" the song everhbody learns to play first on the guitar. He also showed me how to read tablature, the numbered system for denoting what notes to play and when.

My first few years of playing were spent playing a couple songs over and over again. Smoke on the water, a few Nirvana songs I knew. I remember playing "Polly" a few million times. I just kept it up and soon enough I could play barre chords well enough to even venture to play in front of people. My brother's friends all thought I was pretty good and my friends thought I was amazing. I just practiced all the time and it showed in what I could play, but I've always had a huge lack of understanding musically.

Playing the guitar has been very demonstrative of very many things in life for me. It has showed me that one can do anything he wants with enough determination and time. There were quite a few things I thought I would never be able to do when I was younger and now I do those things all the time.

When I was in elementary school I used to show off and constantly talk about how I played the guitar and how I was really good, but that part in me just shut off. I didn't want people to like me simply because I could do this or do that. I wanted people to like me because of the way I am. I rarely ever even showed anybody that I could play the guitar, unless I was really comfortable with them.

I haven't kept to playing very much. I can make up a lot of stuff that sounds pleasing to my ear and that's about as far as I go. I play for maybe 30 minutes now and then I get bored and put the guitar away.

I don't know where my dedication has gone. I think it is still there, but my interest in these two things has flagged hard. I just don't enjoy it anymore. Maybe because it comes so easy to me and I have some idea that I'm very accomplished in both reading and playing the guitar?

I should stop taking myself so seriously. The town I come from has neither a decent book store or music store.

8:09 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Response to Iraq and Virginia Tech Bullshit...
Current mood: naughty

At the risk of sounding more like Bill O'Reilly than I normally care to I am going to respond to a blog of a friend of mine who wrote:

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"33 people killed at Virginia Tech, that's all we hear about... well, that and Anna Nicole, but that's finally starting to die out.  But stop and think for a minute.... 33 people.
33 People is not far from the average number killed in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Iraq EVERY DAY!!
Why is it that we hear this... "33 people killed in a car bomb today"  Period, nothing else, then you forget about it. But 33 people killed in the US  and it's practically the only thing in the news now. Virginia Tech was a tragedy no doubt... however, what's more tragic is that all the killings in Iraq could have been prevented.  All the people (though there are not many left) who support the war who can't stop talking about virginia Tech... think about it.  33 people today, 33 people yesterday 33 people tomorrow, 33 people everyday for the last couple years.  Now THAT is fucking tragic!  Can we stop and be sad for all the soilders losing their lives for NO GOOD FUCKING REASON?!?!?
What is it you want to comment with? "This is war, and people die, get over it"?  Well, no, I won't get over it, what if it was YOUR family, your son, your brother, your nephew/ neice, daughter, sister etc... and they were killed...  suddenly it would be way more tragic than 33 people at Virginia Tech, wouldn't it?"

. Individuals in the army sign up with the full knowledge that they're in the army (ie they might be shot, shot at, wounded, attacked chemically, physically, verbally and in the end,  and might die from the injuries they sustain

Furthermore, in response to the '33 people a day who die in Iraq every day,' according to http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/ , the overall number of American casualties is 3,311 since the war began in March of 2003. Let's just say four years have passed from that time, which is almost fair to say. 365 X 4 = 1,460 and 3,311/1,460 is 2.26 American casualties every day in Iraq. (Note that it is not anywhere near the figure of 33)

As far as Iraqi lives are concerned, they live in Iraq, they have lived in Iraq for some time. Our cultures, American and Iraqi, are completely different. Iraqis, and Arabs in general, kill people in vast numbers. Punishment for crimes is incredibly swift and severe but no where in your blog does it say that in middle eastern countries people suffer under tyranny and are not free to speak their minds, do as they please, or otherwise be free. Saddam Hussein killed his own people, the Kurds to test chemical weapons. I agree that the war was started for apocryphal reasons, but to the overall gain of the world (unless you're Saddam.) We are down one evil dictator who killed his own people and light a bunch of people who stand for what he stood for.

As far as Virginia Tech is concerned, people don't like to hear about school shootings because people don't generally die in numbers above 4 or 5 in the U.S. Also, college students aren't armed and prepared for battle like soldiers are. They didn't sign up to be shot at, they signed up for English 101. Instances of great violence can not be eradicated or even lessened by the absence of guns. When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. The guy who shot and killed 33 people, including himself, at Virginia Tech was a crazy guy as evidenced by his killing 33 people, including himself. Furthermore, guns are what this country was founded on (in part, and it's the second amendment and the whole "bill of rights" hasn't changed much in over 200 years) and in other parts of this country, people walk around with their guns proudly displayed. If there were more guns at Virginia Tech, there would probably be more people alive today.

As far as soldiers "Losing their lives for no good reason" that's all arbitrary what 'no good reason 'is. Soldiers die because soldiers die. They sign up to fight and dying is part of fighting with guns. Death is part of life and whoever says that people shouldn't die have no concept of history and no concept of that death is more fucking popular than Walmart, Coca Cola, and McDonalds all rolled up into one. If everybody focused on helping where they could, like volunteering their time at a hospital or something of this nature instead of bitching about how 'people are dying for no good reason' on a blog… that's a perfect place to stop…

11:58 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment