What Famous Leader Are You?

i don't s'pose i'm really what anybody would call "politically involved"

there was a gubernatorial election here a while back and the only thing that could really pique my interest with all that was taco bell's pseudo election that the democrats got all pissed about. (read about it here) i didn't vote in either election, and i'm pretty sure i feel worse about missing out on the taco bell election than i do about skipping the "real" election, i mean at that point i'd barely lived in california a year, i'd known taco bell my whole life.

in any case, there's another election coming up later this year and given my pretty solid distaste for national politics, or more specifically, the players in national politics, i'm not really thinking very seriously about voting, and as such who i'd vote for. i'd think about it if i could vote "none of the above," but i guess that's neither her nor there. anyways, yesterday i stumbled upon this site, which is sort of a lil deal that asks you some questions about your opinion on different policy issues and uses an algorithm to tell you which candidate best fits your ideology.

it was illuminating, not necesarily educating, but it was helpful. my list was as follows:

1. Libertarian Candidate (61%)
2. Sharpton, Reverend Al - D (58%)
3. Green Party Candidate (58%)
4. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - D (57%)
5. Socialist Candidate (50%)
6. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - D (48%)
7. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - D (44%)
7. Bush, President George W. - R (44%)
9. Kerry, Senator John, MA - D (42%)
10. Edwards, Senator John, NC - D (39%)
11. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - D (35%)
12. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - D (29%)
13. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - D (24%)
14. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - D (21%)
15. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (20%)
16. Hagelin, Dr. John - Natural Law (11%)

odd, that libertarian and green both showed up so high on the list, but in 2000 i considered myself about equally likely to vote harry browne (libertarian nominee) and jello biafra (finished second in the greens' nomination) so i'm not really shocked by it. i'm not sure what that means beyond a pretty decided ideological ambivalence to vote either republican or democrat, which i guess is why the three strongest candidates from those parties are bunched up in the middle, dean and bush at 44% and kerry at 42%.

al sharpton was the highest name on my list, which surprised me, surprised, but didn't shock, i mean we are in the same line of work. i think it sucks that he's a democrat, the democrats aren't going to do anything for him at all, and to be honest it's pretty disgusting the way they use his constituency, whenever he fails to get the nomination, they'll expect him to deliver them the black vote simply because black people vote democrat.

in any case, sharpton and kucinich are the only candidates who are saying anything at all that resonates with me, so here's my deal, if sharpton's candidacy is still breathing by the time the califorina primary rolls around, i'll vote for him. if he wins the party nomination, i'll vote for him. if not, i'll either vote libertarian or not vote at all, i don't think i could bring myself to vote for the greens.

vote sharpton.

feeling: productive
thinking of: what i don't have
music: "six foot five" lars fredriksen and the bastards

a friend of mine went to the doctor one time, and you know it bugs me, all this health stuff; like people who are worried about being in good health. . .like you're gonna live forever.

life, sooner or later, life will kill us all.

so i figure you may as well live a little and get your money's worth for dying. like people worried about diet, i'm going, if you cut out all the cholesterol, and all the calories and all the fat outta my diet, what would be the point of eating?? i, uh, i'm not a big health nut. and, uh, i'm kinda glad i'm not.

cause i, uh, this friend of mine, he's so careful about what he, everything, he went to the doctor and he was having these terrible headaches, and the doctor examined him, couldn't find anything wrong with him. so he asked him,

"well, uh, do you smoke?"
and the guy said "oh, no i never smoke."
"are you ever around second hand tobacco?"
"no, i never go anywhere where i might encounter second-hand tobacco, i'm very careful about that."
and the doctor said "wow, do you, are you a drinking man?"
"no, i am a teetotaler, i've been a teetotaler since i was sixteen."
the doctor said "well, do you watch a lot of television?"
"no, i never watch television, the only thing i do for entertainment is, i read my bible."
the doctor said "then ok, i prescribe for you a pack of cigarettes and a six pack of beer, and a real good movie. if i was as uptight as you, my head'd hurt too."

--rich mullins

happy thought for the day.

"few of us manage to go through life without collecting a group of individuals who would not be sorry to learn that we have died."
--dallas willard

feeling: cynical
thinking of: the mavericks
music: "don't take your guns to town" johnny cash

so yesterday was kind of a long day.

it started early, they always start early. i don't have to be at work til nine, but i'm usually awake and out of bed between half past six and seven. there's not much more that i hate than the feeling that comes when i wake up and look at the clock and realize that i have to get up right away and be somewhere, so i avoid it by getting up earlier than i necessarily have to. i don't like being rushed.

but then for that reason, i sorta feel like i do have to get up at that time, that it's the kind of thing that's essential to my mental health. even with that being the case and me using that time the way that i do, i feel like i could and really should be using that time more effectively. there's been a lot to do lately, mostly at work, and like i said yesterday was long. i've started biting my nails again, i'm not even sure what that means, but i'm pretty sure it's not symbolic of anything great.

anyways, the last couple of days were the kind of days where interacting with people made me ridiculously aware of how differently i perceive things than they do. it's nothing bad, i think i'm just being stretched. the hardest part about everything lately has been maintaining patience, and if i'm saying it's difficult to be patient, then there's little doubt that the whole deal is pretty nuts.

it's nothing bad, like i said, i'm being stretched and i'm pretty sure that it's something that i'll be better off for because it's making me consider how i do a lot of the stuff that i do, specifically work stuff, and why i'm doing it and if i should change anything and it's the kind of thing that will definitely spur me to be more thoroughly aware of what i'm doing and stuff.

so there you have it i guess.

feeling: barely adequate, which i'm not sure is any better than hopelessly inadequate
thinking of: haircut
music: "la donna e mobile" from rigoletto by verdi, i think

courtesy of [cynically] smiling

What would you do if:

You could change your name: consider making "riqui" my legal first name, but probly nothing.
You could travel anywhere for a week: road trip somewhere, thinking mexico
You were kidnapped by two large black men: make a break for it when they stop at williams chicken
You asked someone how far along they were and they weren't pregnant: suggest the potentially lucrative competitive eating circuit
You could only live for a day: like a fruit fly? or one more day? say goodbye to everybody.
Your house caught fire: if i was inside, probly try to get out
You went deaf: take lots of oxycontin
You had a stalker: start changing with the blinds open

Would you rather..

Be a rapist or a murderer: i can't do both?
Live 10 years less or have a stub for an arm: babyarm, not really, i just wanted to say babyarm
Be a liposuctionist or a mechanic: that's tough, probly mechanic
Die of drowning or dehydration: arg, drowning
Fall in love knowing you will be separated or not fall in love at all: the former
Be ugly or fat: that would depend on if i was a liposuctionist or a mechanic
Be dead of emotion or sad all the time: i feel like it'd be the same, what makes emotion worth having is the ability to feel so many different ones
Be deaf or mute: one would take care of the other
Live on the moon or under the sea: no accusations, just friendly crustaceans under the sea
Be too hot all the time or too cold all the time: probly too hot

What's your favorite...and why?

Color?: grey, it suits me
Age?: 23, because it's now, nostalgically? probly 16, that was an awesome year
USA State?: illinois, because everyone knows texas is more than a state.
Body part?: shoulders/upper back, the shape mostly.
Band?: this rotates between about a half dozen bands every few weeks or so, right now stavesacre's resonating with me.
Genre?: of what
Food?: bbq, cause it's good and reminds of texas
Fruit Flavor?: pineapple, it's surprising every time i taste it
Store?: the panaderia, the drives and the food
Accessory?: is gold bond an accessory? you know why.
Cartoon Character?: foghorn leghorn, his stubbornness amuses me
Person?: declines
Holiday?: christmas, the warmth and the associations it carries
Season?: i'm gonna cheat here and say both the change from summer into autumn and the change from autumn into winter, mostly because it makes me feel like i'm really really small.
Weather?: overcast, right before it rains. kinda the same reason i like the change of seasons.
Weekday?: honestly, all of them.

Are you...

Racist: does listening to david allan coe count? how about brujeria? n.w.a.?
Pretty/Handsome: a fortune cookie told me i pretty was once
Political: nah
Opinionated: sometimes
Loveable: so i'm told
Friendly: to a fault
Sexy: dead sexy
Trendsetting: not so much
Intelligent: brilliant, in fact

Finish the sentence..

Get your hands off my: my ass (remember that?)
I love it when you: call me by name
Remember that time we: dragged the hot tub through wheaton in the middle of the night?
Let's go: get slurpees
Why don't you just: say so
I told you to stop: apologizing
I really love your: smile

feeling: pretty good
thinking of: pringles
music: "ivory coast" rancid

so i watched boston public this week.

i notice that i've been talking a lot about tv lately, two entries in the last three days anyway, not sure if that's "a lot", i guess i'll let the public decide. so boston public, it's a weird show in terms of quality, it sort of reminds me of M*A*S*H in that, at its best, it can be brilliant, but when it hits a low, it becomes a melodramatic, nearly painful to watch caricature of itself. the lows are worse than that actually, they lead to the kind of experience that makes you long for a pot of scalding hot water for you to immerse your head into so as to avoid the experience of having to sit through the train wreck that's happening right in front of you, or at the very least make you wish that you lived in frontier times when you could do something better like shovel manure.

this last episode was one that would fall into the latter category. the big conflict was over a bake sale that was put on to prove a point regarding affirmative action, mostly that it unfairly gave persons of color advantages at the expense of qualified white people. there was a stink about people doing stuff like this on college campuses sometime last year. the way it would go was that some campus conservative group, somebody like college republicans would set up an innocuous enough looking bake sale table and peddle their pastries to the public. the much more nefarious (some would say) aim of the project came to light whenever the pricelist was displayed and showed different prices based on the customer's ethnicity. white customers would have to pay the most, and persons of other ethnicities paid less for the same items based on their ethnicity.

affirmative action is one of those issues that's rather polarizing. it shouldn't be, it's far too complex to be, for better or for worse, however, that's the case. it's also an issue that a lot of people presume to have an opinion on without really having a clue about its complexity or its scope, that's probly why it's so polarizing. the vast majority of people formulate their opinions based on the symbols they interact with in the mass media. that's not really helpful, mostly because those just serve to make people stupider.

so anyways, the next morning, i was talking to bone and he asked me if i was against affirmative action, to which i replied "i don't think anybody is." there's not a lot that would make me happier than shooting holes in the arguments of privileged type-A white kids who think they're oppressed because they feel like the system has gone too far. the same kids very likely would never think about raising a similar objection to the use of legacy or athletic talent as a factor in any sort of admissions process, well, the nerds might bitch about athletic scholarships, and they're probably right to, but that's an entire other entry for another day. back to the point, legacy and athletic scholarships, are the longest running forms of affirmative action, but since they favor people with advantage, people whose advantage benefits the system in such a way that it's a known quantity specifically, nobody seems to complain about them.

it cuts both ways though; and that being the case, it's equally misguided to think that taking ethnicity into account somehow makes things "fair" because of the held belief that all white people have somehow had an advantage simply because of phenotype. that is to say that simply being white doesn't preclude a person from being a member of the underclass. jim goad makes this point better than i ever could. basically his point is that the underclass has been exploited by the privileged class without any regard whatsoever to skin color, that race has been used as a smokescreen to cover up substantially more significant conflict between classes, and that there are huge double standards at work, specifically in the descriptions of members of the underclass, double standards that are fed by members of the privileged class to fortify their smokescreen.

basically if you're one of the dipshits who agreed with toni morrison when she said that bill clinton was america's first black president, you're acknowledging that jim goad is right and that you've been hoodwinked by the mass media.

so nobody's against affirmative action. that's not to say that people aren't against affirmative action when they perceive that it favors others at their own expense, but there's tons more to affirmative action than looking for people that aren't white to fill spots in workplaces and educational institutions. in any case, being either completely in favor of it or completely against it presupposes that apart from ethnicity, or legacy, or athletic ability, or whatever variable is thrown in, objective standards are being used in the first place to determine who is or who isn't deserving of a spot.

fairness is a shitty goal to have anyway.


feeling: gimpy kneed
thinking of: kleenex
music: "the lines of my earth" sixpence

What Classic Movie Are You?

i watch "walker, texas ranger."

i know it's not quality tv, but i'm helpless. i seem to have a weakness for crappy, overly dramatic tv, case in point, that time i was addicted to melrose place in tenth grade. besides the fact that i can't/couldn't manage to tear myself away from either of them, walker and melrose place were/are nothing at all alike. at least i had an exuse for the melrose place deal, i was fifteen.

i think i like walker so much because it appeals not only to my desire to be passively entertained, but it fits into what i feel like the medium of tv should be, which is simply to entertain people. tv tends to render itself useless, or worse yet, earn itself a false pretense of usefulness whenever it tries to pass itself off as a medium that can accomplish any sort of elevated discourse on significant issues. there are, of course, exceptions to that rule, but by and large, people forumlating most of their opinions on subjects that are even slightly deeper than trivial based on what they see on tv seems more harmful than helpful.

i don't feel so bad about watching walker.

feeling: restrained, or maybe constrained
thinking of: the hierarchy of needs
music: "standard" paradigm

never read much, but she loved to quote
love is a dead language
all she offered in her parting note
love is a dead language

i close my eyes and it's all i hear
it rings as hollow as a high school cheer
who did you plagiarize this time, dear?
love is a dead language

outside is a twilight snow
love is a dead language

sounds romantic, but i doubt you'd know
love is a dead language

one soft bullet and the rest is blurred
i claw the sky like a flying bird
you've done your duty
you've spread the word
love is a dead language

never felt anything she couldn't touch
love is a dead language
never came close, 'cause she knew too much
love is a dead language
so here's to us all who were born too late
and here's to the promise of a life alone
you've blessed us with such comfort in knowing
love is a dead language

--"love is a dead language" chagall guevara

i have a Y chromosome

it was a weird moment i just had, a moment of emotional overload. i'm not entirely sure otherwise how to describe it. i was in my office and it just sort of felt like i'd come face to face with every single thing in my life that i perceive to be wrong, or maybe not wrong, but less than i want it to be.

i'm at home now, opportune time, around midday, because i'd probably have come home for lunch anyway. it was weird, i wanted to get out of there as fast as i could and probably take part in some sort of anesthetizing behavior.

it was one of those moments where you want to cry, but you can't. jim goad wrote about something like this once, he said:

I wish I could cry, but men are weaned from crying to the point where they become incapable of it. I'm convinced that men live shorter lives primarily because we're not allowed to cry. Boys can do it, but it's eventually beaten out of you, often literally. Men just have to bite down and swallow and let it ravage their innards. Women, well, they bawl at everything. They cry at yellow lights and raindrops and misplaced shopping coupons. They're especially good at crying when you need to cry and can't.

i dunno if i don't cry because i feel like i'm not allowed, i definitely don't feel like i shouldn't because of any kind of external constraint. i suspect in my case the weaning was way more covert than it was overt, and that jim is right.

my innards definitely feel ravaged, and as i'm reading over the rest of this entry, i'm realizing that i'm not as bad off as i seem to be sounding, that i'm in better shape than i'm letting on. i'm not sad or anything or upset, or pissed, or devastated or anything like that, i just want an emotional release and right now i seem to be getting everything but that.

feeling: emotionally overloaded
thinking of: immersion
music: "hope to carry on" caedmon's call

so today's one of those days.

at least as far as writing goes, there's some stuff i kinda want to write about, but it's a bit more substantial than anything i really feel in the mood to write about right this second. in fact, i think i've felt like that for a little while now, and i guess it's a bit evident, given that short entries have proliferated, thursday seems to have become lyrics day, and there was the political ad bit from the ticket, which still makes me laugh.

i'm mexican, so it could be laziness. i tried really hard to stay away from that one, it seemed too easy, but it doesn't seem like much is coming easily. i guess that could be a reason why i haven't really felt like writing "deeply" at all, i just haven't wanted to put forth the effort it'd take to do that. that probably has a bit to do with the time of day i normally write, in the mornings before work, and it's just been easier lately to use that time to wake up mentally as opposed to trying to do anything intellectually or emotionally substantive.

i don't feel too bad about it, i mean i'm still writing, and i don't feel like i'm mailing it in, and i'm pretty sure i'll write about the stuff that i seem to have put on the back burner whenever i'm ready, whenever the time's right, or more right anyway, so i don't guess that it is laziness.

take away my lawnmower, though, and i'd be unemployed.

feeling: disappointed and frail and detached
thinking of: apathy
music: the chili's baby back ribs song

"we must learn to live together as brothers, or we are going to perish together as fools."

MLK Jr.

so i was sick over the weekend.

not really really sick, i talked about that a bit on friday, i wasn't totally bedridden or anything, but i felt pretty cruddy. cruddy enough, in fact, that i took some medicine, some sudafed. i don't normally take medicine, i think it's the hardass side of my personality wanting to break the stereotype of the guy who turns into a total sissy whenever the slightest hint of physical illness rears its head.

anyways, taking medicine leads to it's whole own set of issues, especially with something like sudafed which makes you feel like your blood's been replaced with mountain dew, or something fizzy and loaded with caffeine anyway. i guess now is the time i should mention that whenever i went to college, i pretty much gave up caffeine, so any time it ends up in my system, it screws with me, probably as much as crack would fool with a normal person. the cup of tea that i had each night probably didn't help with anything as far as that went.

saturday and sunday night, i was so hopped up from all the foreign substances coarsing their way through my bloodstream that even though i had the desire to go to sleep around midnight, around ten, actually, there was no way that my chemical taskmasters would have allowed that. i swear it turned me into some sort of superhuman, i think if i ever took that stuff when i wasn't sick, i'd go days, maybe weeks without sleep. even being sick, i didn't go to sleep until sometime around two and felt more than awake when i popped out of bed around half past six. chipper even.

it was scary, i felt like a mutant.

feeling: better
thinking of: lotion
music: "after midnight" patsy cline

genius from America's favorite radio station

--have you heard all the stuff that's been goin on?

--no, jake. what's been goin on all over??

--well, this jesse bingham wants to turn dallas into a communist police state, and force hobos to make love to us.

--how'd you find that out jake?

--well, jesse bingham's fourth cousin, twice removed's cleaning lady's next-door neighbor voted in the american airlines bond election.

--wow, so now i'm gonna have to make violent scab love to a hobo??

--that's right cooder, saucy privates and all.

--i thought i liked jesse bingham, but i guess he's an iraqi now that he's a communist terrorist.

--that's right cooder, but that's not all. jesse bingham once refused a police escort for his mother's funeral.

--so jesse bingham wants to take away our police officers and poison our children with window cleaner?!?

--that's right cooder.

--well i guess i can't vote for ol' jesse bingham, i wish there was an alternative.

--well there is, i'm gonna vote for ol' sylvia hector. she loves police and kids, and promises that we'll all go to heaven.

--that's the kinda leader i want, jake.

--hey, let's go vote right now.

--yah, and afterward, let's kill homeless.

--you said it brother.

i don't feel so good.

mostly it's sinus stuff, though i do feel a bit nauseous too. i don't guess this entry will be anything for the faint of heart, so consider yourselves forwarned. i woke up this morning and my face hurt, mostly because, i guess over the course of the night, my nose had turned into a faucet. the good news is that whatever's coming out isn't green or yellow or any other weird color, so there's no sinus infection or anything like that.

i don't think i'm getting sick or anything like that, i felt better after my shower, which is usually a pretty good indication that i won't feel terrible all day. i may not feel tip-top, but i'll be functional. that seems to be about as sick as i've gotten in the past few years, the last time i got really sick was three or four years ago when i got the flu for a day and a half. that was awful, it absolutely rocked me for about 36 hours straight, it was the kind of thing where any movement that i tried to make jarred my whole body. the only things i could do were get up to drink water and use the bathroom, other than that, the task of moving just wasn't worth it. the good thing about that time was that it was gone as soon as it showed up, like i said, just 36 hours.

i'm about due for another one like that, so i'm knocking on wood.

feeling: perseverant
thinking of: pictures
music: "the bedroom again" reverend horton heat

the pain will come
with the morning sun.

will the night betray the day?

blistered skin
withered from within
scratch to shed this shell away

will you know my name?
or will i hang my head in shame?

will someone take this tired skin
that i've been dying in?

will someone hold me to the light,
and if I die tonight
then take this broken man
and wrap me tight within
this brand new skin?

watch me fly.
freedom like wings and i will use them.
freedom like wings and i will spread them wide.

watch me fly...
freedom my wings...
freedom my wings...

and rise.

one day my ashes will return to earthly slumber
spread far and wide across the desert and the sea.
until then i will live each day in awe and wonder
look forward to each sunrise.

--"wither/ascend" stavesacre

i'm going bowling tomorrow.

i'm in a pretty awful mood right now.

that is all.

thanks for your time.

feeling: beyond the scope of vocabulary, even mine
thinking of: dependence
music: "do you believe me?" the juliana theory

ryan seacrest must die.

i watch more tv than i probably should, in fact some days i get to thinking that any tv is too much and that i'm just feeding the desire that i have to be passively entertained. one of the bad habits i've picked up is that whenever i get home from work, one of the first two or three things that i do is locate the remote and turn on the tv. it didn't use to be that way, in the past i'd be able to show enough restraint to wait at least an hour or so until the simpsons came on.

the trouble started when i got cable and discovered that "walker, texas ranger" came on at five, and became compounded when fox put "king of the hill" on at the same time. i've still got walker to contend with, but what fox has done with their five o'clock slot is nearly enough to sour me on tv. it would be bad enough if they took king of the hill off in favor of "dharma and greg" or some stupid shite like that, but no, their designs were far more sinister, because now we get that douchebag of the highest degree, ryan seacrest.

the commercials i saw for his show were, i thought, pretty innocuous, i thought it was pretty funny that he said the show would be "dangerous". what's so dangerous about a hollywood studio where an irrelevant, freshly finished with puberty dj turned talk show host fraternizes with the spare celebs who can't get on with wayne brady or regis and kelly, i sill haven't figured out.

i think if someone were someone to force me into the studio audience for a taping of that show, that would be dangerous.

feeling: pensive
thinking of: elvis presley
music: "into the dark" the juliana theory

so me and bone were talking about cure alls the other day.

it's a pretty easy thing to think about, perhaps even daydream about; especially in a "wow my life would kick so much more ass if i had *this* or *that*" or whatever sort of way. he suggested pondering money, specifically in the amount $40 billion as an adequate cure-all and then listed some of the things that he thought he would do with that kinda sum. i was hard pressed to disagree with him, $40 billion would put an end to a lot of the frustrations that i perceive at this point of my life, but my gut feeling is that if i'm expecting a sudden infusion of $40 billion to somehow solve my problems, and that i'm also somehow expecting myself to do things then that i could be doing now simply because i'd have money then, i'll be let down, disappointed.

so the money doesn't really do it for me, i'm sort of a rustic anyway, and to be really honest, i'm not sure anything that i'd consider a "cure-all" exists, i s'pose i should have prefaced this entry with that particular statement. that's not at all to say that i don't wish that i could have things that i don't have now or that i don't ever wish that my life could be somehow different, or even that i don't believe stuff like that would improve my life. so i was pretty intrigued when i stumbled upon this here article which is sort of a personality wish-list, in fact that's what the article's entitled. my list would most definitely be different, i'd rather rid myself of my genitals with dull and rusty kitchen utensils than be jim rome, and it made me think of how fragile my identity is and how i've so carefully crafted it based on what i perceive in the personalities of those i admire, those i wish that i could be like.

dvd box set for whoever can guess the top five on my list, lunch is on me if you can guess three.

feeling: better though "not so good" is mounting a counteroffensive
thinking of: the letter i got yesterday that made my day, and the phone call that made it better
music: "no cigar" millencolin

some days life is just tough.

to be continued.

feeling: helpless
thinking of: baser reality
music: "worlds apart" jars of clay

if i hear the word(s) "low carb" again someone's gonna pay, i swear someone's gonna pay.

with the way that people are avioiding carbs, you'd think they carried the herpes or somesuch, but even herpes seems to carry less stigma than do the dreaded carbs right now. if you need proof just look at the valtrex commercials that are on like half a dozen times every hour where people with herpes are shown doing all kinds of neat stuff like hang-gliding and rock-climbing, and probably all manner of other hyphenated activities.

where was i?? herpes? oh that's right, carbs, worse yet. so anyways, it's like the latest thing, low-carb this, low-carb that, even fast food joints are getting in on the whole thing, trading in burgers and sandwiches for these new lettuce wraps that don't give people herpes like i'd imagine the buns used on the burgers and sandwiches do. it's pretty hilarious actually, carl's jr has got this new six dollar wrap that's pretty much just a big-ass slab of ground beef that comes wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun, i think the last thing i'd want to do with something like that is eat it. that bastard dr. atkins is to blame, and if he wasn't already dead, i'd be plotting his demise for sure.

so people are terrified of bread and horrfied by pasta because they make people fat. it's stupid, mostly because even though those are carbs, and consuming too many carbs can lead to being overweight or difficulty in losing weight, but the problem isn't the fact that burgers or sandwiches have too many carbs in the way of bread, it's that people can't stop stuffing their faces with them.

screw you dr. atkins.

feeling: surly
thinking of: too much, and nothing, all at the same time
music: "lonely holiday" old 97s

i used to wrestle.

it's been nearly six years since i stepped on a mat competitively and sometime last week was the first time i stepped on one at all in about two years. it was in high school, and, looking back, i've noticed that out of all the stuff that i did during that time, if there's anything that defined those years, it was wrestling. out of the friends that i have from high school that i'm still in touch with, even marginally, they're all teammates from wrestling. i mean if you can't bond with someone after saving his hat from letting the vomit of a passed-out drunk teammate soak into it, then what can you bond with someone over?

so anyways, when something's such a significant part of your life for such an extended period of time, you don't really tend to leave it behind, and you notice that you take advantage of opportunities to keep connected to it, not necessarily in the al bundy "this is the ball that i scored four touchdowns with at polk high fifty years ago with" way, even though i think bone mentioned that he thought of me in that way.

in any case, i made it to a high school wrestling meet yesterday that one of the kids in my youth group was wrestling in, and the whole thing was reminiscent of dual meets that i'd been in. the kid i went to watch wrestles for lakewood and they had dropped the first few matches and gone down like 28-0. they were down like 31-3 whenever they rolled up to the studs in their line-up, from 125-160, which is whenever they started to get their shite together. they won six out of the last seven matches, with either four or five of those being pins, i forget how many exactly, to tie up the team score at 34 and since they had the tiebreakers they won.

it sort of did make me feel like al bundy.

feeling: worse
thinking of: why
music: "kiss an angel good morning" charley pride

there is something i have found
in the hush of the quieting sounds.
on the falling of dusk
and the chirping of crickets
and the slowing fading distance
of this world that's spinning 'round.
it's spinning upright and then upside down,
and as the night bends to cover the day with her kisses.
it's like a lover's benediction
that i'm sending to you now.
if it can reach past the streets of this town,
then you might hear the voice of a heart that's been lifted
by the song the night has given.

buenas noches from nacogdoches.
from me and from every star God lit in the heart
of the heavens that hang over texas.
may your dreams find you in a tangle of fine spanish angels
whose halos are bright yellow roses.
buenas noches.

so this is no lullaby
that i send on the wings of this night.
wings that flutter as silent as goldenrods blooming.
bursting from bud into beauty
in a way I can't describe.
in a way that's so changing my life.
that the holds that once held me
have all now been loosened.
and I can hear the music.

buenas noches from nacogdoches.
from me and from every star God lit in the heart
of the heavens that hang over texas.
may your dreams find you in a tangle of fine spanish angels
whose halos are bright yellow roses.
buenas noches.

--"buenas noches from nacogdoches" kid brothers of st. frank

so i dig the foot-long turkey breast on wheat.

it's not something you can get in the hood, at least it hadn't been. i guess this is more redux from my trip to dallas last week and the week before, because one of the things that i noticed was that there were about a dozen new subways in and around the neighborhood i grew up in. i found it odd, mostly because as far as choices in convenient cuisine, the hood is resigned to burger king, mcdonald's, jack in the box, church's chicken, and every once in a while KFC and wendy's. i was conflicted, i think i felt the way that white people do whenever the darkies or wetbacks show up in their neighborhoods, but i dig subway, (not half as much as quizno's, but that's another entry for another day) so i was pretty stoked to see them proliferate in that area.

so anyways, i was with my mom, and having flown and left my car in the parking lot at the long beach airport, i was sort of at other peoples' mercy as far as coming and going went. it was about lunchtime and i was a bit hungry. i've been on this no fast food kick lately, and doing pretty good on it, since early august i can count on one hand the number of times i've been to a fast food joint, but knowing the options around where we were knew that if i wasn't eating at jack in the box or someplace like that, i wasn't eating at all.

i needed cash, so i had to go to the bank first, the atm anyway, and my bank had one that wasn't too far, and right in the same shopping center there it was, a subway in the middle of the hood, so naturally, i figured i'd be better off going there than to jack in the box. so i go to subway order my thing, the foot-long turkey breast on wheat and i'm not sure i can adequately describe the disappointment i had. it was horribly made, and tasted like detergent.

i'm holding jared responsible, any excuse to kick that guy's ass is welcome.

feeling: disconnected
thinking of: ashley
music: "dead american" lars fredriksen and the bastards

i have a neat job.

i mean there are days that are tough, when the kids won't shut up and the days that i'm at work for twelve hours or more and the list of things to do never gets shorter and then some kid needs a ride home. i don't mind any of those things at all, in fact quite enjoy them, it's just that the confluence of all of it sometimes is enough to push a person to the edge of madness.

but there are those other times that the perks really shine through and you get to spend all monday afternoon at a movie screening. that's what happened yesterday. i got an invitiation to an advance screening of The Passion of The Christ, the mel gibson movie that's stirred up so much controversy. what we saw wasn't the finished movie, the ending wasn't complete, the score hadn't been integrated, so there was placeholder music, and some effects hadn't been put in either, but that didn't really take anything at all away from the experience and definitely took nothing from the story.

right from the beginning, the movie grabs you and doesn't let go. it's ridiculously poignant and unbelievably violent, i'd never cried in a movie because someone got the living hell beat out of him until seeing this portrayal of the violence Jesus was subjected to. what makes the story go so far, however isn't necessarily poignancy or depth of the storytelling, the vividness of the images, or even the use of the ancient language, but the context and the knowledge of who was the story and why it unfolded like it did.

mel gibson was there and did a q & a right after the movie ended and listening to him, you could tell that this work was something that he did sincerely, something that, for him, wasn't a career aspiration so much as an act of obedience. listening to gibson talk about how he'd carried the vision of this film for twelve years before he finally made it and how he couldn't get away from it, and now as it's nearing completion the vision that he has for how it'll affect the people who see it, it's clear that he understands the scope of the story he's telling.

it opens february 25, go see it.

feeling: small
thinking of: reality
music: "louder than the mob" the o.c. supertones

second of two, continued from yesterday

i have a degree in sociology.

people that know me know that i'm definitely not one to brandish accolades, in fact, i enjoy the feeling i get when i can tell someone looking at me is thinking that since i'm wearing torn up jeans and have four or five days' worth of growth on my face that i'm sort of an idiot. but all that's neither here nor there, but it is relevant inasmuch as i was thinking about my trip to dallas and for some reason got to thinking about how it related to certain theoretical perspectives of sociology.

i think the whole thing started last week when i was talking to laura, and started to think about how many times in college i'd talk to her while i was in dallas after cutting out of a day or two of class. specifically i remember that i missed (well not "missed" so much) my 9:15 social theory class, where i first learned about structural functional theory and conflict theory.

so to the point, being at home was like conflict theory. marx was the guy who came up with the whole idea of conflict theory and basically the gist of it is that society is in a constant state of upheaval, that comfort levels are, as a rule, very low, and that anomalies occur that see reality reach a state of equilibrium, or for lack of a more adequate term, peacefulness. i definitely felt like that in dallas. periods of peacefulness and comfort were more the exception than they were the rule. there was definitely an increased level of dis-ease for most of the time that i spent in the house, which is where i spent most of my time. it seemed as though i reached an increased level of statsis whenever i left home, like when i hung out with bone, or dunx and brad, or laura.

i was expressing a bit of confusion yesterday because of some uncertainty about the concept of home. when i made it back to my apartment thursday morning, i felt like i was walking into the feeling that i thought i should have felt when i walked through the door of the house i grew up in. starting to think about it, i came to the conclusion that the state of things while i'm here is pretty much the opposite of what it was whenever i was in dallas. long periods of stability interspersed with the occasional uncomfortable upheaval, which meshes pretty well with durkheim's theoretical perspective of structural-functionalism, which says that the default state of society is stability and stasis and that the exceptions are the instances where that stability is shaken up.

none of this matters, because it was weber, not durkheim or marx, who was right anyway.

feeling: slightly distressed, in spite of myself
thinking of: what i'm feeling
music: "what trouble are giants" rich mullins

first of two

i'm home.

or in california, so so much cognitive dissonance as far as that goes. i forget who i was talking to, but it was brought up that i got two homes now, which i don't s'pose that i'll at all dispute. i mean my standing out here is quite less tenuous than a student's, but my connection to dallas is still pretty strong.

so anyways, i got back thursday morning, which was a total nightmare, mostly because my flight was at half past eight that morning and i didn't get home from being out on new year's eve until sometime around six, a mere two and a half hours before my flight to long beach was set to leave. there was no sleeping that night, evidently i spent three hours face down in brad's yard, but everyone knows that just doesn't count, not as sleep anyway.

in any case, new year's was a blast, we met at brad's and went down to deep ellum, hit the bars mostly, we were leaving the first one as the clock struck midnight and wished people happy new year on the street as they walked by. we saw javy who had the unfortunate task of working, luckily, he was in deep ellum too, at the cafe brazil, so he was able to head back to the alley with us for some champagne. i s'pose all that lasted til about two before we headed back to brad's.

i'm still not sure where the bruises came from.

feeling: internally duplicitous
thinking of: work, if you can believe that
music: "fight to live" bouncing souls

ever wake up with fresh bruises of uncertain origin?

good gravy, i love new year's.

feeling: utterly and fantastically useless
thinking of: new year's
music: "this is your life" dropkick murphys