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My three musketeers where especially demanding this morning, so we had family activity time. It's amazing what a laser pointer can do for your relationship with your pets. Micah called in a bit of conundrum, so I am galloping off to his rescue in a few minutes. It smells like rain outside. I like that smell. It's muggy and fresh all at the same time. It's an olfactory oxymoron. Today just doesn't feel right to me. Yesterday 'day' felt like a Sunday, so now that it is Sunday, it feels like a non-day. I should be busy doing nothing but that just won't do... if I do something, it feels like it's the wrong thing, but I can't put my finger on the right thing. Fuck. Maybe some fresh air will clear my head.

I dig Half Price Books. I went there this afternoon and found a lot of great literature for cheap. It's all and all a good experience except for the stale fart smell that lingers in the store... poor ventilation and too many Tex-Mex places close by I suppose. Tonight was supposed to be a Camron night. Meaning, anything she wanted to do... it's her last night out on the town while here and I thought that we could paint the town paisley and have a great time. The sky is the limit... anything she wanted (except the male strip club because it is common knowledge that non-payroll penii are not allowed on premises). We got all dolled up and headed out for some Houston nightlife... what I like to call "hell" but I'm sure many a sequined Barbie doll would disagree. We stopped for a drinks at a local watering hole before heading downtown for dinner. Clayton had a simple Tanqueray and tonic while Camron enjoyed an ameretto sour with an extra glass of cherries (yes, I said glass.. ie. 30 or 50 or something). We ran into Danielle... that was unexpected, but nice (he bites tongue). I took Camron downtown for dinner. There was (of course) a wait, so we listened to some jazz samurai lay down the play quartet style while sipping some martinis. I'm still well in my fake, superficial people tolerance range at this point. It's all good. I dig the music, but I am big into people watching, so I visually wander and note. Our waiter was a pleasant country boy that fit in like a cockroach in a bowl of steamed rice. The restaurant was slightly upscale (ie. napkin layers, crumb dusters, please sir and thank you with your cock in their mouth) but this guy just seemed too just-got-back-from-fuckin-his-sister-in-the-doublewide to be there... maybe I was imagining it through all the He-Haw nuances in his speech. The food was ok. My people watching continued... busy place... incredible number of beautiful women with very, very unattractive men. This is interesting to me. Maybe Scooby and the Mystery Machine can unmask these Mr. Withers wannabes and explain what the fuck is going on to me. We finished up our meal and paid our Huck Finn before making it back to the car. Camron decided that she didn't want to dance, she didn't want to drink, she didn't want to bar-hop or socialize... she just wanted to go home. Hey, it's her night. We went home. I am relieved that I wasn't subjected to any chicky-boom music and I didn't have to look at one more rico suave Roxbury brother with a Brylcreem'd noggin and size too small silky slacks full off shoehorned ass. Merry Saturday to all and to all a good night.

"How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here"
I took Camron to breakfast at Le Peep this morning. I laugh every time I go there because the pronunciation of the name is the same as the French word for blowjob (pipe). Oddly, this is not on the menu. I lack motivation today. Other than the breakfast outing, I’ve been a house mouse. I feel some cabin fever working it’s mojo and would love to meet a benevolent doctor of mixology to free pour love to my dead-head stretch it tonight in midst of the funky groove of old school blues. It feels like Sunday… and though it isn’t really silent and grey, I feel like etching a postcard.

"my nose is full of downtown and her lips taste like straight Crown... God knows I should fucking run from this yearn... but I burn" - blues not worth mentioning here
The weekend is so close I can taste it. My mouth is watering like that salty salivation in the seconds you ride the vomit train to the projectile eventuality that meters one of the worst experiences on Earth that doesn't involve pain... but without the bad anticipation. No, this watering is like envisioning sucking on a terribly tart lime or slowly tracing your lover's lips with your tongue, tenderly not kissing. Yes, the goodness of mouth watering that in mere moments will become my stomach full of weekend. Damn that feels good. I may not be able to say I feel like a million bucks (because I don't know what a million bucks feels like exactly), but if I told ya I felt like five bucks and a bottle of cheap gin, the meaning would be the same. I feel energized. I feel alive. I feel decadent. I wanna light stuff on fire and blow shit up and have sex while robbing liquor stores... logically, this poses technical difficulties that may interfere with successful completion of said felony, so we'll throw out the liquor store part... keep the explosives... throw in some kink and throw out the keys to the handcuffs. I smell trouble in a 750 ml bottle and it's calling my name. Turn up the amp. Bollocks the lot of corporate rot. I'm on parole for 48 hours of furloughed fornication. Granted, due to my cursed scruples, it'll probably not be physical... but sociopsychological fornication sounds like more fun that animal crackers in the original circus box. Fuck me wild like Chester before Cheetos sold out (bastards). Chew broken glass. Scream as loud as you can until your throat feels like bursting... stop, drink a pint of lemon juice... repeat. All my fucking rocketsauce. Fuck you.

OMG. Have we taken blogging a little too far? You be the judge. (be gentle baby)

"Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!" - Alex (A Clockwork Orange)
Tickety tock. The day is crawling at a snail's pace. I have some work to do upstairs in the datacenter, maybe that will make the time pass more quickly. I had some blues inspiration at the open jam. A few of those cats were amazing. It makes me smile. I'm not quite ready to quit my day job and hit the road, but maybe I'll at least practice a little more... hehe. I am addicted to Melissa's blog now. Speaking of blogs, the blogathon is only a couple days away. If you haven't sponsored someone yet, please do. It's for a good cause. If you want to sponsor someone and don't care who it is... or just want a no brainer choice, you can sponsor who I'm sponsoring. Check here for some background links. Camron told me last night she was leaving Monday. She extended her stay to go on a few dates with this guy she picked up in Barnes and Noble. Bookstore guys... I never get picked up in Barnes and Noble. My sister... she's quite the industrious one.

Put your money where your mouth is and take it.

I went to the monthly Houston Blues Society's open jam tonight. Very impressive. I had a great time! A friend of mine showed up to co-appreciate the performances with me. I think we were both pleasantly surprised. I love live music and I love the blues. What more could I have asked for in one night? I guess it's kisses and hugs to Eclair, Penny, and Bianca and then off to bed to dream of sexy guitars and smooth bottom end bass and drums that fill the groove between sex and bad moods.

"Place to Fly" (Brian Andreas)
She kept asking if the stories were true.
I kept asking her if it mattered.
We finally gave up.
She was looking for a place to stand
& I wanted a place to fly.
______________

I slept a lot today. I needed it. My body is still longing for rest. I finally got dressed and went to pick up coffee for Camron (and me). She looked at me and said, "you still look so exhausted Clayton... even after all that sleep. You look terrible." Thanks love. I guess that's what family is for, eh? Not holding back any punches. I stumbled into my home office and found a lonely IM on a big blank screen. An ex-girlfriend that I have not heard from in a very long time... one that squashed my heart like a little bug (as if there was just one that fit that description in my near 31 years on this little cooling rock orbiting the big ball of happy fusion)... well, the most recent one... a simple, "hey stranger" ("hey stranger" = "I probably got dis'd by my new man, cheated on, taken for granted, etc. and realized that I lost something good in you, so how about you be a glutton for punishment and let me back into your life, allow me to regain your trust, use you, and fuck you over again... sound fun?"). I didn't reply. I don't know how long it have been sitting there since I don't time stamp my messages, but either way, I didn't reply. It bothered me though... how dare she after what she did? I don't understand these things. I talked to Sean. He sent me some finals on some of the VFX shots for Xtracurricular. Basically, a couple of rocket shots and their support sequences. Very, very nice... but then again, his work is always outstanding. He drove down to meet some friends at Siggraph yesterday. I wish I could have joined him. Eric gave me a CD of all six Tenacious D HBO specials in MPEG format. I laughed my ass off at those this morning... especially the ones I had not seen before. I had a great phone conversation this afternoon with a new friend. There's nothing like good intellectually stimulating conversation to brighten an otherwise dreary afternoon. I think I hear the couch calling me.

I called in sick. I never call in sick... well, almost. I can probably count on my fingers the number of times I have called in sick since 1989. I have been in this funk all week. I wanted to stay home and nurse myself to health on Monday, but I had work to take care of in the office that couldn't wait. I wanted to try to do the same on Tuesday, but my boss scheduled an important meeting. I wanted to yesterday, but I had to be in the office to support some testing that has been scheduled for some time. I left at lunch yesterday. I came home and collapsed. I was feeling a little under the weather last night, but saw some friends and I kinda took my mind off of it. I received some shocking news and suddenly felt uncomfortable. Quickly, I felt that same bad joo-joo I'd been running from all week tap me on the shoulder again. I was feeling pretty bad by the time I drove back to my house. I was almost home and something furry jumped in front of my (sister's) car. I am not sure if I hit it or not, but I think I did. I couldn't find it anywhere. It cold have been a rabbit or a cat. If you have the slightest clue how I am about animals, you would understand how this destroyed me. I felt so bad... tears on my pillow were the last thing I remember. So, like I said, I called in sick. I have a lot of work to do in the office, but I am just in a rut. I don't think I have a fever, but it feels like I was the one hit by a car. I heard on the news that a local man was diagnosed with the "West Nile Virus". Maybe it's that and I'll die soon.

"Um... a malt Glen Garry for me and my friend here. And if you tell that bartender to go extra easy on the water, this 50 cent piece has your name on it." - Trent (Swingers)
Ok. I'm not going to argue with the purists out there that whines like a fucking kindergartener at recess that skins his knee on the playground concerning bullshit issues like whether a martini should be shaken or stirred... gin or vodka... dry or dirty as hell... you get me? Who the fuck cares? Drink what you like. Like what you drink. That's my motto... well, one of them anyway. Truth be told, the secret to a classic martini (as in original recipe) is all in the ratios. Gin was where is was at in the beginning and vodka only became "acceptable" in the 60's. They started out stirred with love, but James Bond was a catalyst in the shaking' department. These days, you can get a "martini" that is so damn far from a martini that one wonders why the name is even the same... maybe it's the glass. My brother, Sean, drinks apple martinis (obviously a by product of living in Hollywierd for a decade)... my dear friend Greg is hooked on Cosmopolitans and some black variety that contains sweet liquors and although the recipe escapes me at this moment, I remember imagining it to taste good when he described it. Clayton likes his martinis dry as the Sahara desert. If you must use vermouth, measure in parts per million. I can do gin or vodka, but my favorite variation of a martini happens to be just as far from the original as Johnny Appleseed Sean's and Sex and the City Greg's delights. Grey Goose, Ketel One, Chopin... any of the three will do... frozen glass, chilled, neat... no additives, no preservatives... big fat olives only if I haven't eaten. Simple. Now, how does one drink 3 or 4 ounces of vodka and call it a martini? Good question. How are any of these 484 recipes martinis? I don't know. What I do know is... you're so money and you don't even know it...

"While everybody's hiding under covers, who's making Lover's Lane safe again for lovers?" - Elvis (Costello, not Presley)
It has come to my attention that the early morning doesn't like me very much... well, I don't like that bastard either. I'm dizzy on RealLife™ and want to float away. I heard from an old friend this morning. He is changing jobs (again) and moving from Detroit to some little town in Ohio that I've never heard of... with his new, live-in girlfriend. I was listening to him describe the job, the move, the her, the hours, the pay, the house, etc. I guess I didn't even notice when exactly I started hitting my head on my desk until the blood was running off onto my khaki slacks and making little patterns that looked like Looney Tune characters in a porno. Ok, so I wasn't bleeding... but that would have perked up my morning a little bit. I have always been the guy scalping tickets on the road less travelled. That guy that tried to convince my friends that the real salmon don't die after struggling upstream, the are all swing dancing and laughing through martini goggles. I remember my graduation from NNPS in Orlando... while my friends were celebrating over a pitcher of horse piss at a local sports bar and spilling peanut skins on their laps, I was collecting fossils at 243 feet below the surface in a subterranean cave system in the Florida aquifer on the deepest SCUBA dive I have ever attempted. I remember passing up a pay-per-view boxing match with the lemmings to have Killington peak all to myself when the wind chill was 75 below with on-contact frost bite at the top of the lift. I remember spending my summers and autumns on belay in New Paltz... stopping on the third pitch of a climb to photograph the ocean of colors as the forest below changed through the seasons. I remember Australian style repelling shear faces and hiking the Adirondacks for days without civilization. I remember learning to fly and how good it felt. These are the things I was thinking about while my friend's domestic suburbia was painted on our conversational canvas. Life is meant to be lived. I sit here not judging him for his definition of that, but more judging myself... moments like this clarify why I always feel like I'm searching for something. While not unhappy, I feel like there is something is my life that is missing... something that I need, but I can't quantify it into verbal description or imagery. What is it? I'll probably spend my life looking for it... and clearly the irony lies in it's mystery... if I find it, I may never know I had.

It looks like rain again.

"The Clod & the Pebble" (William Blake)
Love seeketh not Itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hells despair.

So sang a little Clod of Clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a Pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to Its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heavens despite.
______________

I took my sister to C&H Steakhouse for wine and piano last night before catching a late film. Jean-Paul plays there on Sunday and Monday nights. He is my favorite pianist in town. I ran into this older couple at the bar that I vaguely knew from previous social events. They were waiting on roadside assistance while sipping their overpriced foo-foo drinks. I pondered what a branding iron would feel like pressed against my cheek as I politely listened to their pathetic story. Her SL500 felt "funny" as they were driving off the feeder to the restaurant, so they're having Mercedes take it for repair.
"That's the funny thing about her car. You press a little button in the car that says 'repair' and they (Mercedes) send someone right away to get the car. It's just that easy."
"So, how long ya been waitin' here?", I reply...
"about an hour and a half. I'm starting to think she should have called a tow truck instead..."
"oh hush! He wouldn't say that about his car..." (ps. his car is a Lamborghini)
I felt myself getting sick. My full-bodied, well balanced merlot that clearly had a spicy black cherry aroma and pleasant, yet subtle chewy plum flavor with firm tannins suddenly became a shot of NyQuil. I grabbed my sister's arm and we escaped Robin Leech's bathroom masturbation material before I started doing shots of hard liquor for real just to keep my burning tongue from smiting them. I can only stomach so much of someone stroking their ego before I just have to bow out.
His phone rings. "What? Another hour before you arrive?"
I smile.
Why are all my encounters with the filthy rich comprised of old Scrooge-esque geezers? Lets say the next ridiculously wealthy stranded motorist I run across be a unbelievably gorgeous, single, no baggage, female, brilliant scientist standing beside her 575M that she bought herself as a pat on the back for winning the Nobel prize and needs a ride because she's late for her most recent best seller's book signing. LOL... yeah, right. That's about as likely as finding a woman that won't lie to you. Muhahahaha!

Ok. I'm a little spunky this morning.