I got my tickets to the Warped Tour on the 29th. The list of "expected" bands (so far): Alkaline Trio, Good Charlotte, Lagwagon, M. M. Bosstones, Morgan Heritage, MXPX, New Found Glory, No Use For A Name, NOFX, Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, Flogging Molly, Hot Water Music, Ozma, Reel Big Fish, Something Corporate, Trust Company, Dynamite Boy, Manic Hispanic, Quarashi, Student Rick, The Casulaties, Thrice, Thursday, Tsunami Bomb, 3rd Strike, Switched, the Line, Arkham, Places to Park, Wanted Dead, Pistol Grip, Autopilot Off, Handsome Devil, The Used, Death By Stereo, 1208, Five Speed, Glassjaw, Home Grown, RX Bandits, Finch, The Starting Line, Allister, Showoff, American Hi-Fi, District 7, Hope, Crash 81, Over It, Narcissus, Recover, Staring Back, Tantor, Graves, Ten Times A Day, Limitpoint, Useless ID, Roller, LoBall, The Eyeliners. It should be great... they have like 7 stages this year.
Tired eyes and weary frame... he opens his mouth but no words come out. Air passes over his lips and his chest tightens. Useless. His eyes close again and the music wraps around him. Not today.
cold pizza = breakfast of champions
If (Rudyard Kipling)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
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...my grandfather's favorite poem. The last time I read it was at his funeral. It really is a great poem.
Thanks for the reality check.
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." - Ernest Hemingway
I think I understand why I don't really sync with a lot of people around me. I see people living their lives like they are on a conveyor belt... they see what is around them but can't seem to do much to change the path they are on or stop to appreciate where they are at any instant. So much concern over where they will be in the future that they have no clue where they are right now. I live my live one day at a time. Everyday. That does
not mean that I don't plan or have goals. It means that I make decisions based on the air that I have in my lungs right now. That's probably why relationships are difficult. It has become socially acceptable to play a relationship like a game of chess. Anticipating your
opponent's move... reading between the lines... questioning everything... withholding trust... no wonder skepticism is commonplace. Simple is true... if it feels good to rub it, rub it. What I am trying to say is, why can't people speak from the heart? Why is it so frowned upon to pass through each moment like it the last moment you have? Embrace the now is a little cliche for me, but the principle is outstanding. Here's another Hemingway quote that I love: "Never mistake motion for action." To me, this speaks of passion in what you do. Taking action to me can be doing anything that is done with passion. There isn't enough passion in the world. I do what I believe is right. I treat people how I would want to be treated. I speak what I think and feel truthfully and without regret. I don't have any friends these days that appreciate or understand that... I just come off as weird. I have no witty segue... but I also wanted to mention I am going to start diving again. I miss it... it wasn't until it came up in a conversation last Thursday that I realized how much I missed it. I lived in Florida for two years once. I used to dive at every opportunity... several times a week if I could. The list of vacation destinations is firming up :-).
BloggerPro archiving sucks. So anyway, at Kara's request I did away with the five mile scroll of posts and trying out a few days at a time. I am playing around with manually copying the archive files to the document root directory to try to "workaround" Blogger's phucked up linkage. If you have troubles... I'm sorry. I update frequently... probably too frequently, but if 3 days is too much (or too little), please let me know. Uh, where was I... oh yes, I see... work work work work work work work...
Putain de merde! I'm a web site... uh, sorta. I wish you could see me blushing...
wow! I really just don't know what to say... uh, thank you.
Irma's again. Excellent lunch. Greg came downtown to pick me up for lunch. It was quite unexpected and a great surprise. I needed a break in the day... something to help the afternoon pass quickly. A few big projects were just handed to me. The last thing I wanted right now was something that would preclude vacation from my schedule for the next couple months. I want a vacation. I need a holiday. I have a list of things in my personal life that I want to put my focus and energy into and another ladle of gruel in my work bowl is not helping that effort either. Of course, there is also the other obvious preoccupation... my social life... specifically, my dating social life. The latter has become a complex subject for me of recent. Let's just leave it alone. Ahem... uh, ok then... I lost my train of thought. I hate that.
"I hate when people try to read into your lyrics. Besides, I'm usually ashamed of what I write, so the more garbled and unintelligible, the better." - Todd Lewis (Toadies)
Have you ever heard a song hundreds of times and then one day you're listening and you just get it... like the iron skillet of understanding just smacks you square in the forehead? That happened to me this on the way to work this morning. It isn't the first time it's happened in my life... I love it. It's like, "holy shit! I see now." Today is a typical Monday morning. I didn't sleep well last night. I couldn't find the keys to my office (at work) this morning so I was running about half an hour late after my Sopranos style search of the house. That's going to be fun to clean up. Eclair was little miss affectionate this morning... obviously she appreciated my sitting on my ass all weekend at the house and spending time with her. It's hard to leave those sad little eyes. As I was approaching my building, I realized that I left my proximity card security badge on a shelf in my bedroom. Fuck. I am fashionably sporting a paper sticker badge with my name scrawled on it in Rambo rent-a-cop's handwriting. Nice. Sexy. You should try it sometime. I need more coffee.
"Women are Rubik's Cubes and men are color blind." - Bowndzonian Theory
After a day like today, a glass of red wine is like a tender kiss. Does one ever need more? I decided to call my father friends and wish them a happy Father's Day since my immediate relatives that fit the bill are either physically or emotionally dead to me. Most were surprised to hear my voice. Apparently it isn't customary to wish someone HFD when you aren't actually related... however, on some level, I thought it to be appropriate. I opened the yellow pages and dialed for dinner. My sprint of motivation ended with the phone calls and I had no plans of cooking. I am not ready for another week in the office yet. I need more time. Maybe I'll just ad that to my list of needs and someday it'll so up in a FedEx box on my doorstep. Wouldn't that be nice?
Shades pulled down. A/C forming little icicles from the vents. Mail stacked up on the counter. Dishes to be done. Clothes to be washed. Kitties curled up around me. Puppy in a ball on the floor. Movies queued in a stack by the television ready for quick change like a Pez dispenser. Guitar in my lap. No fingers touch the strings. No expression on my face. No words spoken. Solitude. Emptiness. I don't know what's wrong with me today. What is it that makes a hollow man whole? I really loved my grandfather. He died when I was in the southern Adriatic Sea in the spring of 1999. I travelled 9000 miles in 2 days without a wink of sleep to make his funeral. I cried a lot. I still cry sometimes. The clock just ticks. The leaves shiver on their branches... waving along the beams of light piercing the cracks I couldn't cover. The phone rings. I don't answer. One of these days I'll get up and find my smile. It's got to be around here somewhere.
"We are defined by the choices we make." - Tyler (Fight Club)
I haven't been very productive today. I just got off the phone with
Sean... he's got some near HD quality shots of
Brittney and
Alley up on his news page for those of you that are following
Xtracurricular. I am having a lot of trouble getting port 25 (SMTP) functioning correctly on the new server. I am giving up tonight. I watched SNL and laughed a lot... not nearly as much as when I went to this
link. It is truly amazing how little it takes to amuse me these days. I spent most of the evening on the couch with my guitar. I found my tuner (which had been lost for months) after tearing the house apart. I really need to spend more time playing. It sooths me. I think I am going to take voice lessons. I don't really know how to practice singing to develop my vocal chords. Happy Father's Day. I haven't spoken to my father in almost 3 years... and then, it was a phone call that lasted 5 minutes. Before that, it had been years since contact. I think my father has good intentions... but just fucks everything up in the delivery. Maybe he's changed. Maybe not. When I was growing up, I told myself that I would never be like him... that I would be better... different. I'm not a father and may never be one, but if I were, I would never want my son to feel that way about me. My dad has been in and out of trouble his entire life... married 8 times... the opposite of what a father (or husband) should be... I don't really have much else to say on the subject. Happy Father's Day anyway. It's just another holiday that passes. It's here, but tomorrow it'll be gone for another year. Blink. I have not been to the grocery store in a while. I found some microwave popcorn that Camron bought when she was in town visiting and in my hungry craze, I cooked it with all the skill a non-microwave-popcorn-eater could possibly muster. Black popcorn isn't that bad, ya know? The house smells funny. I think I am going to play with Eclair for a while before bed. She's been sulking today. Is it depression or is it empathy? Maybe I should move out of Houston... not all
monkeys are astronauts.
ps. For those inquiries: it's not my rabbit. It's just a picture I thought was pimptacular. The closest I come to this type of pet is a herd of squirrels that live in my yard and drink black and tans made out of MadDog 20/20 and Nighttrain (no pancakes though)... they hold hands and chant "twenty twice, half the price" while dancing circles around my citronella candles on the patio.
"Better Be Home Soon" - Crowded House
somewhere deep inside
something's got a hold on you
and it's pushing me aside
see it stretch on forever
I know I'm right
for the first time in my life
that's why I tell you
you'd better be home soon
stripping back the coats
of lies and deceiption
back to nothingness
like a week in the desert
I know I'm right
for the first time in my life
that's why I tell you
you'd better be home soon
so don't say no, don't say nothing's wrong
cos when you get back home maybe I'll be gone
when the nights go down
when you've had your fill
when there's nothing left
it would cause me pain
if we were to end it
but I could start again
you can depend on it
I know I'm right
for the first time in my life
that's why I tell you
you'd better be home soon
that's why I tell you
you'd better be home soon
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