Category: three sheets

Chiefly concerned with altered states of consciousness.

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catching up

Looked lonely; fit.
Forgive my blog dereliction; it was a busy week in New York. Right now, I’m waiting for the shuttle to JFK in the empty hotel bar, and for some reason I’m really sleepy. New York City was fun for me. I ended up meeting up with Ben’s brother Dave, end was able to kill time with him these past couple nights.

Tuesday night we crashed a work party atop a skyscraper, with an awesome view of the city on all sides and free cocktails and hors devours; ate some fat, fat steaks in a restaurant which bled “old New York;” and ended the evening at a downtown dive called The Happy Ending for a party called “ShitHamerred.” (I don’t really know if it was one word, but it looks better that way to me). The party was drunkenly good, and I ended up catching a cab back to the hotel for a 4am bedtime. Needless to say the next day on the conference floor started a bit rocky, but I maintained. Wednesday I caught the trains over to Williamsburg and we met up for dinner and a stop at the very cool Barcade. Having someone to hang out with really makes traveling more enjoyable. So, New York was fun – we’ve established that; but I’m glad to be leaving… to be going back home and “rooting” again for a while.

At the airport, I broke down and got something to eat, since I hadn’t had the opportunity earlier in the day. For some reason, the golden arches of McDonald’s were extremely appealing, and I got a Big Mac meal. Now, I probably haven’t been to a McDonalds in nearly a year – in fact the last time I can remember was when I was driving from Houston to Killeen to visit my brother at Fort Hood. But, in high school – I took full advantage of the .99 cent Big Macs. I can remember eating them with Andy, I think. Anyway, the Big Mac was OK, but it’s not he point of my story. I wanted to talk about where I ate the Big Mac.

Being that I’m doing this trip solo, I’ve done quite a bit of “table for one” dining – and my Big Mac meal was no exception. I sat down alone at an area of tables which was somewhat removed from the rest of the food court, and proceeded to fill the non Big Mac containing side of my Big Mac box with ketchup for my fries. Not long after I’d sat down, a few Transportation Security Agency employees converged on the other tables near me. Now, I forget, and I know that’s bad, but I forget if the TSA is a new, post-9/11 thing, or if it was around prior – but I guess that’s immaterial. The whole reason for writing this is to get to the point that, if these are the people who are securing our travel… oh boy. I mean, these were kids, and their conversations cracked me up. “Shit dogg, you was so drunk last night.” “I know homie, when I got home my baby-mama was giving me a bunch of shit and I be all like ‘You da one who birfed all dem damn kids, why you gotta be fuckin’ wit me?’” “Awww hells playa, you done told it straight!” “I’m still fucked up right now I think.” “Hell yeah you be lookin’ all to’ up.”

Great, we’ve got the “interlude players” from Doggystyle protecting our airports.

On the plane again. United’s “preferred service” routes between NY and CA, with AC outlets for every seat. So, I can run my laptop the whole time – listening to music, writing, and so far on this trip: working. Yeah, I decided to do a mass e-mail attack and conquer my travel-bloated inbox. Believe it or not, it’s an extremely rewarding thing to do, I get a great sense of accomplishment from taking it from 300+ mails down to 20-something.

So I’ve already said how much I love this Architecture in Helsinki album, but good lord folks – it’s just not getting old to me. My latest love is this track, which, to me, is impossible not to love. The start-stop composition and catchy tune make it loveable enough, but it’s the rolling-drum-backed power-tool-to-scream crescendo that sealed the deal for me. Six months in and I don’t mind saying that this one is in the lead for the laurels in my mind. I have no idea what it’s about, the lyrics are as cryptic as the title, but it doesn’t matter.

Weekend, I’m out.

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a hardcore caveman

It's good to be back.
When we got on the shuttle that took us from the Denver airport to the hotel, they gave us a couple pieces of advice: 1. Make sure you drink more water than normal, because you get dehydrated easier at the city’s elevation; and 2. Any alcohol you consume here has double the impact it would in your usual lowly-elevated cities. I dunno, but #2 kinda sounded like a science experiment waiting to happen to me. And, after last night, I can say with confidence that, for me at least, it ain’t true. I kept track of my intake last night so that I could double it the next day and see what I “Denver-drank.” Turns out, if the doubling rule holds true, I Denver-drank fourteen beers and four shots. If I had drank that in the span of last night’s outing I’d’ve been supremely blasted… and I was only pretty plowed (yeah, there’s a difference).

Still, the cigarettes did the most damage. When someone saw me with one last night and cast an inquisitive glance, I nodded toward my smoking hand and, over the thumping bass, said, “Only when I drink.” “How often do you drink?,” quipped back my friend. “Only when I smoke,” I replied. I’ve kind of figured I’ll never really learn with that one… I’m sure there was one caveman who insisted on sticking his hand in the fire over and over just to see if there was one time it wouldn’t burn him; I’m that caveman. I guess I could have worse alcohol-induced vices, like hookers or barfights or seizures. Well OK, maybe seizures are a stretch, but you know what I’m saying. I’m merely flirting with cancer, at least I’m not running the risk of flopping around and swallowing my tongue. What the heck? Ahhh… In bed by 3am, up by 5am to catch my flight… a hardcore caveman.

It was a good way to end the conference, cast off the pressures of the preceding week, and let loose a bit. We ended up at the Coyote Ugly bar, the likes of which I’d never been to before. The bartenders are all attractive young girls who split their time between serving up the firewater and dancing provocatively on the bar for the audience of ogling men. The place is kind of a laugh really, watching a whole crowd of men under the complete spell of two or three scantily-clad women dancing on the bar… holding out fistfuls of bills for more drinks, whistling and catcalling, and snapping pictures. Someone said to me while we were there, “This place is like the halfway house between stripping and bartending, ” and that’s about as accurate a description as you can give it. But, I had a good time. Those girls own their 99% male audience, and they know it. I was thinking what a feeling of power that must be, and how if I was a hot chick with little inhibition I might like to strut around on a bar and sling drinks to make my way through college or something. Anyway, the beer was cold, the music was loud, and I’d never done body shots before – so all in all it was an enjoyable experience.

I don’t understand what the hang up is about driving with the windows down and the air conditioning on. Why is this so bad? I love having the windows down when I drive, but sometimes it’s a little too warm for my taste if the sun is beaming directly on me, so I turn on the air. This seems to confound some people. I think the idea is that I’m somehow “wasting” air conditioning. As if filling the shut-up car with it is any less “wasteful.” It’s not like there’s a true thermostat in my truck and the air will only come on to maintain a set temperature. When I use the air with the windows up, I just turn it on and leave it on to maintain a temperature that I like. How’s that any different than doing the same thing with the windows down? I like the fresh air, and the cold breeze from the air vents… is that so hard to understand? A waste of gas, you say? Bah, if the windows were up I’d surely have it on anyway. Get off your high horse and let me enjoy my air conditioning however wastefully I choose. I also mix regular trash with recyclables and pour motor oil down the stormdrain, so take that… hippy.

My entry yesterday generated three comments, that’s not bad really. Well, of course I got 753 online poker and natural viagra comments that got trapped by the spam filter. But three legit comments is a big deal for me. I’m not some superstar blogger who gets fifty comments on his every post, I’m just some writin’ dude who has six friends who know his web address.

No, I don’t really pour motor oil down the stormdrain. Catch ya later.

Posted on

craps was his favorite game

Luck be with me.
Someone give me a breathalyzer, right now. Do it. It’s only 8am but I swear I could blow at least a .05.

Being so multicultural and everything, Sharaun and I and friends went out to celebrate a day dedicated to the patron saint of Ireland. And, despite all the intelligence which pointed to it being a weeknight, I went ahead and invaded the beer tent anyway in a futile hunt for the weekend. I never did find the weekend, but I realized I’d been looking a little too hard sometime around 11pm. That’s when I found myself standing outside with some guy in a towering green felt hat which had a poofy green afro of fake hair attached. He offered me a cigarette and I accepted, a sure sign of drunkenness for me. Loopy already, I got the magic Marlboro and could barely stick around to hear the rest of my new friend’s story (something about a tattoo he got when his dad died: a flaming baseball and some dice). It’s always amazed me that the rare gravitational anomaly where you suddenly feel like you’re rooted to the ground and your surroundings are swirling around you only seems to happen when you’re drunk… there’s got to be some science behind that. Thankfully, I was able to master my emetic reflex and make it to bed.

Sometimes I wonder if my lulls in writing are because I’m so busy that I don’t have time to write, or because I’m so busy that there’s no time for anything worth writing about to happen. I think it’s a bit of both. I mean, after a 12hr day of writing e-mail, not listening to meetings, and staring at a computer monitor… there’s really not much to write about besides writing e-mail, not listening to meetings, and staring at a computer monitor – and that stuff just doesn’t make for interesting writing. On days where I don’t really do anything but work, there’s not much interesting stuff to talk about. As a semi-firm (like tofu) rule, I don’t get into too much detail about what I do for a living or where I do it… I mean, bloggin’ fools have been fired for that!

Until Monday.

Posted on

doubts

YIS for election.
I can’t honestly believe that anyone thinks there can be a successful election process in Iraq just two weeks from now. Some facts about the election process: There are more than 120 recognized parties who are eligible to run no more than 275 candidates each. The people are voting in 275 members to the general assembly. Yes, you read that right, voters are expected to pick two-hundred and seventy-five people off a list of somewhere between 20,000-30,000 names. There is no formal registration process; in fact, eligible voters are being culled solely from a decade-old list of people, which was drafted under Saddam’s regime. In the past weeks, there have been multiple attempts on the lives of candidates and election officials.

I understand that democratic elections have been held under less-than-ideal circumstances before, post-revolutionary war for one… but this Iraq situation seems ridiculous. As a voter, I have a hard enough time educating myself on the 30 names on my ballot… can you imagine trying to sort 30,000 people? How would you even go about preparing to vote intelligently? You wouldn’t. You’d vote down party, religious, or social lines. Can you imagine how daunting it would be to stare down at a ballot filled with tens of thousands of names? I wonder how many pages the thing is. It seems like a farce to me… an elaborate charade. I guess it has to happen sooner than later though, because the of ousting of a government to install another just isn’t “cool” anymore. Would that we could return to the days of “sponsored” governments and US backed coups… y’know, maybe roll the USS Nashville up into the Gulf everything goes smooth. Where’s Teddy when you need him?

I think I know why they call it getting “tight.” After a couple $30 shots of tequila, the skin on your face actually feels tight… stretched, or something. I didn’t mean for tonight to end up like this, I had scheduled a meeting for 6am tomorrow. Luckily, the guy I scheduled the 6am meeting with is crashing in my spare room… a victim of the same tequila and beer cocktail that brought me down.

I’m going to bed. Goodnight.

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down at the end

You'll get it after reading it.
12:53am on… I guess on Tuesday morning, although to me it’s still Monday night. Once again my fingers protest the amount of coordination required to type words. I have a full glass of water on the desk beside me, y’know, my garlic necklace, warding off the vampire that is hangover. I actually had a really abstract paragraph written earlier today, about how I like women… it was a good piece of writing… but I trashed it. I do that sometimes, trash stuff I think is good… because it’s not fit… not fit for the “blog,” or something. So go the perils of an “online” journal, I suppose.

There are some times in my life, not very many actually, that I can remember feeling… feeling alone. Not that I really was alone, but that I felt alone. Not without friends, just an in-the-moment loneliness. Something not quite like a true feeling of being alone – but more like feeling alone in that moment… mostly a welcomed kind of alone, not something uncomfortable or negative. I don’t even really know, I just thought of this theme as I was brushing my teeth – and in my slight drunkenness it seemed like a nice personal divergence from the boring slop I’ve been posting lately… somewhat of an entry in the true “journal” sense, like things used to be or something. I’m going to run with it now I think, since it’s on top.

I feel alone. I’m staying at my Uncle Tom’s place in California. My brother and I are here for a week. Uncle Tom and Aunt Judy live in small house here in Tepesque Canyon. They have goats, and chickens, and a satellite dish. In the morning, we throw feed to the goats and gather brown eggs from the hens for breakfast. Aunt Judy cooks the eggs while Frank and I watch the Monkees and You Can’t Do That On Television on some crazy satellite-only channel called Nickelodeon. Right now it doesn’t show much but Canadian programming for kids and some old, old reruns. I don’t know that at the time though. I remember helping paint a shed, and sitting on a porch swing with Tom and Judy’s dog. I remember a tree-swing’s apex that put you over a small cliff looking down on a field of tall grass. I remember masturbating for the first time, and associating the feeling with homesickness. Hey, I told you this was going to be personal.

My mom and my brother and I have just come home from our after-school place. My dad has beat us home today, sometimes that happens. Before Frank and I can get out of the car, my dad comes out of the house and greets my mom with a hug. Something is wrong, I can tell. I’m not sure what Frank was thinking, or even if it made that much of an impression on him at his age. But I know something is wrong, even through the silence of the car-window glass I can tell by the way my mom is reacting to whatever my dad is telling her. The house has been robbed, and vandalized. Many of our things are missing or ruined. It feels very personal, the “feeling” part of the word “violated” that can’t really be conveyed in a dictionary’s definition. I get on my bike and ride. I feel alone. I ride aimlessly, I don’t want to see the house anymore… don’t want to smell the soy sauce in the hallway carpet; don’t want to see the ketchup on the walls and ceiling; don’t want to wonder what they did to my cat that makes her walk funny; don’t want to think about the fact that they stole the spare keys. I ride to my school, and find my 4th grade teacher still in her classroom. As I cry on her shoulder, I feel alone.

I feel alone. I’m on a Greyhound bus to Texas. I left college only a few hours ago. I didn’t bring a book to read or anything. There is some humongous kid next to me, he got on the bus in a town called Defuniak Springs and he’s talking about going to football camp in Texas. I try to be as polite as possible, making him feel good by keying in on things he says and learning what makes him feel comfortable. I’m good at this. I feel like I can read people like books, judging within minutes what makes them feel most comfortable and using it to befriend them. Do they most enjoy talking about themselves?; listening to you talk?; strategic non-talking cues?; whatever it is – I’ll exploit it and make them comfortable. Emulate his posture, his demeanor, ally loosely with the things I presume he believes in and trusts. We talk for hours about things I could care less about. His folks are split up, one lives here, one lives there. Eventually he gets off the bus, and I’m alone again. No matter who sits down next to me, I’ll have this conversation with them. The couple going to Las Vegas, the girl who’s just leaving Florida. I don’t even smoke, but I’ll have cigarettes with you at the stopovers. As I retire from my game of dice with four guys in the Dallas Greyhound terminal, and curl up to sleep on my suitcase so it won’t get stolen, I feel alone.

I’m sitting on a stone bench outside a lecture hall at college. I feel alone. I watch as people ride by on bikes, heading to class. My class isn’t for another hour, but it’s easier to stay here than go home to my place. At least I found the right building, this campus is huge. I only have an hour to wait. Between classes the street is full of students making their way to whatever’s next. I’m waiting here for the 1st day of differential equations. Calc I and II were no sweat, but I had a hard time during some of the more abstract portions of calc III. I don’t really know what to expect from differential equations. I couldn’t know at the time that I’d strike an accord with the teacher, enjoy the class immensely, meet a couple friends, and go on to earn one of my post-community-college As. At the time all I could know was that I was feeling kinda lonely on that stone bench in the sun waiting for class to start. Watching all the other kids go by with such a sense of knowing where they were and where they were going. A long way from the here and now of writing this paragraph, a lot less confident, a lot less knowing.

I’m sitting in some cubicle. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, so I’m not really doing anything. I’ve got conflicting feelings of guilt and getting-away-with-something. I’ve been working here for a month or so, and my manager has changed twice already. No one even really knows I’m here, I can leave when I want. So I do. I come in late, and leave early. No one knows I’m here, I report to no one. I feel guilty sometimes, taking a paycheck for what I do during the day: listening to Kid A and researching alchemy online. Frequenting the Smashing Pumpkins message boards, engrossed in the mystery that is Machina and the symbology and double-meanings of it all. I do nothing to contribute to this company, I am collecting an engineer’s pay for nothing. God I feel alone up here, no one knows I exist and my requests for work seem to fall on deaf ears. Once, I got called into the lab to help record data… but it turned out to be idiot’s work, and I was back at my desk reading about Jung’s thoughts on the spiritual applications of traditional alchemy in no time. I have none of the knowledge required for this job. I am in over my head, but it’s OK because no one even knows I exist. Lonely.

Yeah, I feel good about this one. Tipsy or not, I like the writing. I like when paragraphs appear without effort, like they’ve written themselves or something. It’s that easy sometimes, when you’re “in the zone” or something. Words come out and start lining up to make sense, you don’t even need the full faculties that soberness affords… it just flows.

So, with my glass of water nearly empty and my eyes heavy in anticipation of dreams… I’m signing off. Goodnight to you all.

Posted on

on a mushroom

Wonderland.
Work’s been busy since being back. So much so that I’ve wasn’t motivated to write about anything yesterday night, or at least that’s what I’m blaming it on. Tonight’s no better, really. It’s late right now and I want to read a chapter of my new book before going to bed. Anyway, I’m only here to unload some ones and zeros from this evening, because in my head that is a suitable substitute for writing.

Evening started out going to a social dinner at one of the larger brewpub/eateries around. Within walking distance from my house, I set out around 7pm. Walking pointedly through the cold of evening, I arrived at the party-locale a couple minutes later and a few degrees colder. The evening’s festivities were to be as a fare-thee-well meal/gathering for the Suze. We would meet, talk, drink, eat, and finally part ways with have-a-safe-flights and see-you-soons. Before that though, we’d end up drinking homemade eggnog at the Cassleman estate, and burning apple tabac in the “hookah-tepee” (read: garage):




And… that’s it. Really. I have nothing more. Might be a sparse week for writing, if this goes on. Hey, there’s a $30 charge to my debit card from some gas station in Philedelphia, PA. That can’t be good, right?

Dave out.

Posted on

out of the shadows

My sinuses are still punishing me.
Saturday night was outstanding. At last pre-sleep glance, the cellphone said it was nearing 4am, and my swimming head said it was an evening to remember. The plan was to meet up with old friends at a local brewpub, enjoy some beers and company. Turns out the chosen watering hole must be a popular place in town or something, because before the evening was through, a small crowd of old friends had amassed. People I hadn’t seen in years, people I hadn’t dreamed of seeing. It was all so awesome, seeing people, talking to people, hugging people. Everyone’s a long-lost best friend when you’re standing around outside drinking. I couldn’t do it every night, but had time and beer not beat me down ‘round 3am, I’d’ve stayed longer. I really want to write more about it, but I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to gush on as if it were “magical” or anything, but it sure was nice to see everyone again and catch up.

And even though I don’t smoke, I found myself having a couple “social cigarettes” Saturday night. Beer-induced smoking is a vice of mine, and sometimes I indulge it freely. So happened that this time, as I was sitting, drinking beer and smoking, up walked two girls from the past. They walked up and greeted the older, fatter, balder, me, all as I sat swilling beer and puffing pussyish Marlboro Lites. What a great visual statement I must have made on my current station in life. Not that I expect I was judged, just wish I hadn’t had a cigarette pinched firmly between my fingers as I hugged my hellos. It’s OK though, the morning finds my body punishing me for my lung-blackening moments of weakness – with the stuffy head and caved-in-chest feelings of the infrequent social smoker. Look at me… smoking, drinking, and starting sentences with “and.” I am a soul damned. Here are some ones and zeros from the evening:

Old habits die hard.

Like it was yesterday, 15 years yesterday.

Changing subjects…

Because we’re driving home from Mims, FL, I’m reminded of a good story. So, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale. A tale of a fateful trip. Four passengers set sail that day, aboard a tiny ship. They were: Me, my then-girlfriend, her mother and her step-dad. I had been dating this girl for a couple weeks, or months, or something. It was the first time I really did anything with her family. We hitched up the boat, picked up some sandwiches, and launched at the local public ramp. I think the trip was mostly a pleasure cruise, I don’t really remember the intent – other than my intent, hang out with my hot new girlfriend in her bathing suit. I don’t remember a lot of the trip, but one memory sticks out in my mind.

The boat was anchored in shallows right off some island in the river, and we decided to get out and clam. Clamming involves walking around in the shallows, waist-deep in the river, and burrowing into the riverbed with bare feet, feeling for shells. It was just her and I, her folks stayed on the boat. Which meant, for us, clamming involved making out in the shallows, searching hands obscured from sight by the waist-deep river. It’s such a fun memory for me. Feeling, and being felt, up beneath the water. Adolescence, makes for good memories.

Changing subjects…

Just arrived home on a cool Sunday afternoon. Turns out there was some mix up with the housekey we left so that the cat could be fed and her litter emptied. While not that big of a deal, the combination of fatigue and travel-wear made it a sore point for me. Already pissed, I flipped on the computer only to have it tell me one of the drives in my RAID array had failed. Great. Not in the mood, I give up and emptied the cat’s shit-brimming litter box as Sharaun picked up the nuggets she left in her favorite litterbox-overflow area of the living room carpet. Having not eaten since the pre-flight 5am meal and arriving home to bare cupboards only exacerbated my agitation. As if to seal me to my gloomy mood, the fates made this the day the TV decided that the flaky video-in jack would start acting up again.

Woe is me, what I horrid life I have! Surely I must suffer like no other on Earth, right? I mean, how could anyone, anywhere, possibly have a worse day than me? The toll of flying home from a week’s vacation spent with friends and family, arriving at the house which I own and inhabit with my beautiful wife, and now the picture on the TV is so crappy that I can barely make out the “for the price of one cup of coffee a day” kid with a distended belly and fly-filled eyes… like I said, I have it so bad. Order me a pizza before I take my own life.

Changing subjects…

Wow, wow, wow. Got home from Florida and checked my e-mail. There was one e-mail that I got while on vacation, but couldn’t open the attachments. Turns out it was from my oldest friend – Shaine. After meeting in the 5th grade, he became what I consider to be my first “best” friend. We kept in touch after my family moved to Florida, but eventually lost track of each other somewhere after high school. Later on, Shaine somehow found my e-mail address, and we got back in touch. We had a few years of sporadic communication, and then I got married and moved back to California. Somehow, we managed to get in touch again – and now we talk pretty regularly. This year I saw him for the fist time in 15 years, and even attended his wedding. Anyway, the e-mail that this paragraph started out talking about came from Shaine. I guess his mom found some old letters that I sent him, dating from sometime after I’d moved to Florida. If I were to guess, these came from mid to late 6th grade for me. How rare is it to have something like this?

As, I suppose, is to be expected of a letter to an old friend – I stretched the truth a bit to make my goings-on seem a bit more exciting, but to be honest I was surprised to see how close I stuck to the facts. The part about the fire pit and gas and singed leg-hair is 100% true, as is the part about sneaking over to “Mary Jo’s” place and playing spin-the-bottle. We were what, 12, 13? Walking the streets at 3am, 4am… insane. Anyway, the only part that’s fabricated is the part about the kissing. Looking back, I exposed my own ruse. The part where I say it was “great” because there were two guys and one girl… not exactly what I call a “great” spin-the-bottle scenario. No one kissed me, I just hung out. In fact, my first kiss wouldn’t come for another year and a half. I don’t know if anyone kissed anyone, really, for the most part I remember being bored, but excited about being somewhere I shouldn’t at a time I shouldn’t.

I wish I’d saved the letters I got from Shaine. The one I remember most came in an ordinary envelope, but had a strange bulge at the bottom corner. Upon opening it, I found a small rectangular “packet” of paper, tightly wrapped and taped for transit. Inside that packet was a solitary seed. “Mexican Redhair,” promised Shaine. Although I was still a year or so away from my first experiments with marijuana, I’ll never for get that letter. If Shaine can dig up more, I’ll put ’em here… I eat this stuff up.

One good thing about getting home, I found the new dual Bright Eyes releases leaked online. Haven’t had the chance to listen to them yet, but am excited about both.

Look at all that media!! Blog-media, may I be excused from writing? Yes, yes you may. Dave out.